Check out this new study of online consumption of local news by a fellow named Matthew Hindman. He studied 100 metro areas and found that people in Dallas/Fort Worth don’t consume much local news online. For instance, in the top city, Salt Lake City, a typical web user generates 89 pageviews per month of local news. In Oklahoma City (roughly the median), the typical web user generates 12 pageviews per month. In Dallas/Fort Worth? Just 5.5, tied for seventh-least pageviews.
Then there’s the matter of how many local news sites he found in each market, defined as a site that captures at least 1 percent of the market’s web users in a month’s time). He found we only have nine, about the median. By comparison, Indianapolis has 17, and Boston, the top city, has 28.
It would be nice to know which are the nine North Texas sites he measured. All we know is that four are TV sites, four are print, and one is web-only.
