Web Traffic Patterns: Established News Brands Cede Ground to Partisan Political Upstarts  

The final days of the 2024 election season should provide a boost to the crowded galaxy of websites focusing on politics. But dig deeper into the data, and a distinct divide emerges among different generations of news brands. 

Data from Similarweb shows that while web traffic for the top news outlets are mostly stagnant or trending downward, a slew of online news platforms that started over the past five years have managed to find a foothold.  

The catch is that the successful ones look more like niche political blogs and social media feeds rather than the old guard of media outlets. 

Looking at the top 10 of the 450 most visited English-speaking news and media publishers in the U.S. from October 2019 to September 2024 reveals a de facto record of recent history. 

Major spikes in web traffic can be seen in particularly newsworthy months — March 2020 (the start of the pandemic), January 2021 (the insurrection on the Capitol), March 2022 (the war in Ukraine), and most recently July 2024 (President Biden dropping out of contention) — but the numbers also show that some of the top legacy news platforms are contending with downward trends after those previous years boosted news consumption across the board.

While CNN, still the most viewed online news platform, performed well over the summer, its lead over competitors has shrunk with each passing year following the boom in 2020.  

Fox News, while still second in total web views for the past five years, has fallen behind The New York Times in the past year, having just hit a five-year low of 260.2 million last month. The Times is the only platform in the top 10 that had sustained growth (355 million views last month, a roughly 57% increase over September 2021), thanks to its additional fortification as a lifestyle hub for cooking, games and sports (the latter now via The Athletic).  

But while the top media outlets are indeed the names one expects and all follow similar trajectories, looking at the top performing newcomers gives a more vivid picture of the state, and potential future, of the journalism industry. Over half of the 13 news brands launched within the last five years within the top 450 most viewed in the U.S. are considered to have a bias, be it right or left leaning, according to media tracking platforms including AllSides and Ground News.  

While this group includes progressive and left-leaning platforms such as the climate change-focused startup The Cooldown and the worker-owned 404 Media, the majority of the partisan platforms that have sprung up are right leaning or openly hard right.

Among these are Revolver, a Trump-endorsed hard-right platform that has stoked controversy for its provocative headlines; the Bongino Report, a news site from conservative commentator Dan Bongino; and the Patriot Journal and Conservative Brief, two that run on the Fox News playbook of sensationalist headlines and distinctly right-leaning messaging. 

The emergence and popularity of these sites shouldn’t come as a surprise in the age of social media. Social media algorithms are designed to incentivize engagement, and as it turns out, making people angry is a great way to do just that. As a result, these partisan outlets are able to thrive on platforms where people can curate their own information echo chambers and rage against the headlines that defy their beliefs.  

But even as these platforms have attempted to combat the misinformation and bias cycles they helped create, the damage might already be done. The Pew Research Center found that as recently as August 2024, 18% of U.S. adults surveyed prefer to get their news from social media, placing it just 5% behind visiting news websites directly. It’s also the only digital category to increase in preference since 2020. 

Another recent Pew report found while U.S. adults overall trust social media less than national and local news organizations, the percentage of those who do trust social media sites has increased from 34% to 37% between 2016 and today. Trust in local and national news platforms, meanwhile, has dropped in the same period. Most concerningly, belief in social media jumps to 52% percent among 18-29-year-olds. 

This reality around social media impacting which and how news stories are written and consumed is well-trod territory. But Similarweb’s data unearthed another concerning trend: the rise of aggregate websites, which take what makes social media so addictive — endless scrollable content, personalized curation, perceived validation of one’s worldview — and give it the look and feel of a news source.

While platforms like Ground News are designed to identify media biases and offer greater transparency for readers, others, such as Revolver, aren't so altruistic.  

All of this is to say that even as the major layoffs at big names including the Los Angeles Times and CNN are concerning in their own right for the journalism world, the signs flashing in the lower ranks of the industry shouldn’t be ignored.