• April 4, 2008

A new Ball State University study concludes that newspapers need to overhaul their political blogs to boost interaction with readers.

A review of 360 newspapers in the week before the fall 2006 elections found that most staff-created blogs had few posts and failed to generate much reader participation. Some 42% of newspapers had political blogs, but the commitment to blogging varied widely.

While some blogs had as many as 57 posts during the five-day study, the average was 8.2, and almost a quarter had none. About 58% of readers contributed more than one comment to blogs, but 80% of bloggers posted no responses to readers' comments.

The Ball State study suggested newspaper blogs might be better off focusing on topics that draw more reader participation such as sports, parenting and other lifestyle subjects.

--Mark Walsh