"Tragedy attracts eyeballs, and that's even more true when the tragedy doesn't have a clear ending. On December 13, a 48-year-old man opened fire on a group of Brown University students studying for finals, killing two and wounding nine others. A mass shooting on an Ivy League campus was always going to draw attention, but the scale multiplied when it became clear that the shooter had somehow gotten away."
"The national attention pushed a lot of people to the website of The Providence Journal, Rhode Island's major daily newspaper, which covered the story closely. And that extra traffic meant that it saw the largest jump in web traffic of any U.S. local newspaper in December 2025, according to data from Similarweb. Since the summer, we've been publishing traffic data for the top 25 local newspapers in terms of traffic and identifying which ones see noteworthy swings."
A December 13 mass shooting at Brown University killed two and wounded nine; the shooter later died by suicide after a separate killing in Massachusetts. The Providence Journal experienced a dramatic traffic surge tied to intense coverage, recording the largest web-traffic jump among U.S. local newspapers in December 2025 per Similarweb. The paper's December visits rose 106% from November, moving it from No. 48 to No. 24 nationally and marking its first appearance in the top 25. Q4 traffic totals for top local newspapers show other large month-to-month gains, including big increases at PennLive.com, Chicago Sun-Times, and Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Read at Nieman Lab
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