(NCR photo/Teresa Malcolm)
The National Catholic Reporter ranks among the top 10 nonprofit newsrooms in online readership.
With an estimated 1.9 million online visits in March, NCR placed seventh among nonprofit news sites per rankings maintained by Nieman Lab, part of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
NCR in March outpaced outlets like Mother Jones (9), The Intercept (10) and PolitiFact (13). With 24.5 million visits, The Conversation, a site that publishes pieces by academic experts for a general audience, led nonprofit newsrooms in March traffic by a wide margin, followed by the investigative journalism outlet ProPublica with 4.6 million visits.
NCR was one of two publications covering religion in the top 25 list along with The Forward, which reports on Judaism in the U.S.
"These numbers show that our talented team of reporters and editors are writing compelling articles, analysis and commentary that speak to the interests of a growing number of readers," said Michael J. O'Loughlin, NCR's executive editor. "They are another sign that National Catholic Reporter remains the go-to place for thoughtful, independent journalism about the Catholic Church."
Founded in 1964, National Catholic Reporter is an independent, lay-led news publication that provides news coverage, analysis and commentary on the Catholic Church in the U.S. and abroad. It publishes a bi-weekly newspaper along with daily online reporting. NCR is headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri.
March marked the second consecutive month NCR ranked among the top 10 on the Nieman Lab list after placing 9th in February. Traffic jumped 362,000 visits between the two months, an increase that NCR managing editor Stephanie Yeagle attributed in comments to Nieman Lab to an overall increase in organic search traffic.
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Among the most-read stories in March were reports on a Chaldean bishop jailed in California for alleged financial crimes, Catholic sisters in Spain becoming entrepreneurs and an Iranian ayatollah's appeal to Pope Leo XIV at the onset of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. A column by Dan Horan — on St. Francis and obedience — and a priest's open letter to the pope about sexual harassment rounded out the top five.
NCR has regularly placed on Nieman Lab's top 25 list for monthly web traffic over the past year. Its high mark came in May 2025, reaching No. 3 on the list, boosted by coverage of the death of Pope Francis and the conclave that elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the first pope born in the United States.
Nieman Lab compiles its rankings from membership rosters for the Institute for Nonprofit News, which counts 500-plus members, and LION Publishers, a trade group of more than 400 local independent online news outlets. It uses traffic numbers for website visits from SimilarWeb, a web analytics company.
