• by John Gaffney , April 14, 2003

While much of the headlines went to The New York Times announcements that heralded its 26% first quarter earnings gain, it's more specific numbers for March told a more mixed story. Mixed as in flat for the newspaper group, and new records for its Internet division.

Advertising revenues for the Company's Newspaper Group decreased 1.6% in March 2003 compared with results for the same month last year. "In the early days of March, advertising revenues continued to increase, as they had in January and February, in the 6 to 7% range," said Janet L. Robinson, senior vice president, Newspaper Operations. "But with the onset of the war in Iraq, advertising weakened, particularly in travel-related categories such as transportation and hotels, adversely affecting the overall results for the month."

Advertising revenue for the New England Newspaper Group, which includes The Boston Globe, decreased 5.1% for March 2003 compared with March 2002. National advertising revenue decreased in large part due to softness in travel, technology products and financial services advertising, which more than offset growth in the entertainment category. Advertising revenue for the Regional Newspaper Group increased 1.3% for March 2003 compared with March 2002. National advertising revenue increased as a result of additional telecommunications and national automotive advertising. Retail advertising decreased due to weakness in a number of categories, including department stores, medical, food, drug stores and electronic/appliances.

Better news was reported at the NYTimes.com division. It reported major traffic increases throughout the first quarter of 2003, culminating in record page views in March, double the level of a year ago.

NYTimes.com achieved a record 30.7 million page views on Monday, March 24, with more than 2.3 million unique worldwide visitors that day, the first Monday after the United States bombed Baghdad. The previous record of 29.2 million page views was on September 13, 2001, with 1.25 million unique visitors for the day.

March also marked a significant milestone in daily unique visitors. The month averaged 1.7 million unique worldwide visitors each day, with Mondays ranging from 1.98 to 2.33 million visitors. March page views jumped 34% to 615 million over February's 460 million page views, and rose 42% over January's 432 million page views. Year-over-year, traffic doubled to 615 million page views in March 2003 from 306 million page views a year ago.

Multimedia usage also grew rapidly, with 620,000 unique users in January, 1.1 million in February and 1.3 million in March. The 77% increase in February reflected traffic to multimedia coverage of the Columbia shuttle disaster.

"Our strong growth in readership - more than two million readers on our busiest days - is testament to our commitment to constantly update our news site with news, analysis and features," said Leonard M. Apcar, editor in chief of NYTimes.com.