• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer, August 6, 2007

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:

• Thirty-nine papers offer original content
• 26 use AP video streams
• 13 offer video content from local news outlets
• Four use all three technologies
• Ten papers use a mixture of two different types of video

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:

• 93 papers offer RSS partial text feeds, while three offer full text RSS feeds. No papers have begun embedding advertisements in their RSS feeds.
• 95 percent of papers offer at least one reporter blog. Ninety-three percent of these blogs allow comments. In 2006, 80 percent of the papers offered blogs, with 83 percent allowing comments.
• 67 percent of newspapers now allow comments on articles. This represents a 14% improvement on 2006 statistics, when only 19 percent of papers allowed comments on articles.
• 29 percent of the nation's top 100 papers now require users to register before gaining full access to their website, up 6 percent from last year. Three papers required a paid subscription, while 26 papers required free registration.

Overall, use of online features by newspapers improved across nearly all the categories when compared to last year's research.

To access the PDF report and more on Bivings, please visit this site. The .gif file for the chart can be found here