The Internet Seen As An Opportunity for Newspapers
A recent study of America's top 100 newspaper websites, entitled "American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity?" by Bivings Research, noting that using the Internet to expand a newspaper's reach is becoming more and more important, reports that ninety-two percent of America's top 100 papers now offer video on their websites... a significant jump from 2006, where just 61 percent offered video. In this group:
Erin Teeling, New Media Associate, The Bivings Group, says "While many industry experts fear that the Internet will spell the end of newspapers as we know them, ... (the team at) TBG feels that the Internet presents newspapers with a unique opportunity to make up for lost circulation and readership. (The) study explores... the difficulties facing newspapers regarding online advertising, shrinking staffs, and reaching out to consumers."
Some additional key findings:
Overall, use of online features by newspapers improved across nearly all the categories when compared to last year's research.
Online Features of America's Top 100 Newspapers, 2007 | |
Feature | % of Papers |
RSS | 97% |
RSS for different sections | 97 |
RSS includes ads | 0 |
Reporter blogs | 96 |
Reporter blog comments | 86 |
Comments on articles | 33 |
Tags | 1 |
Registration | 29 |
Bookmarking | 44 |
User generated content | 24 |
Mobile content | 53 |
Video | 92 |
Podcasts | 49 |
Source: Bivings Report, July 2007 |
To access the PDF report and more on Bivings, please visit this site. The .gif file for the chart can be found here