News Media Rankings

A recent report by Experian Simmons evaluated media on "five dimensions of engagement" and provided rankings of news sources for their power at creating social interaction - essentially, what formats/platforms do people find compelling and worth talking about.

Not surprisingly, Americans gave news media highest marks for Social Interaction, indicating that they regularly talk with friends and family about things they see on news programs or read about in news magazines or on online news sites.

News media also get high scores for Trust, meaning that while other research has shown Americans don’t necessarily trust “the media” at-large, consumers believe that the news they personally consume provides them with accurate and trustworthy information, Experian Simmons said.

Among the TV and magazine news properties evaluated, Experian Simmons found that the most talked about news property is The Drudge Report, followed by The New York Times, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The O’Reilly Factor and The Wall Street Journal.

Paradoxically, the study revealed that the dimensions of Trust and Social Interaction don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand, according to Experian Simmons. The most-talked-about Drudge Report scored 12% above average for Social Interaction and ranked #1 in that dimension, while scoring 10% below average for Trust, for which it ranked #46.