Newser Versus The New York Times: Who's Winning?

For a quick sense of the changing economics of Web versus print news, the New York Times last year laid off 15 members of its newsroom staff, when it failed to get 100 people to accept voluntary buyout offers.

Online, the Times -- with hundreds more of text and multimedia staff members behind it -- puts out the top newspaper Web site in the United States. In October, 20.3 million different people visited the site, according to Nielsen Online.

Michael Wolff

By contrast, media commentator Michael Wolff's news aggregation site, Newser, is visited by 1.5 million different people each month, he says. His staff, which summarizes content produced by other news operations and sells advertising against the synopses, includes 8 editors and a half-dozen business and technology employees, or 14 staff members all told.

Wolff is author of "The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch" (Random House, 2008).

Wolff said Tuesday at the Harvard Business School Club of New York that he expects Newser -- which proclaims "Read Less, Know More" -- will make money this year, its second full year in operation.