The Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers


Fish HeadsThe Bivings Group recently published a report on the state of the use of the internet by america’s newspapers.

It summarizes the use of web and web2.0 features used on 100 newspapers websites.

Here are their key findings:

  • 76 of the nation’s top 100 newspapers offer RSS feeds on their websites. All of these feeds were partial feeds. … In addition, none of these feeds included advertisements. …
  • Only 31 of the papers offer podcasts on their websites.
  • 80 of the papers offer at least one, and often multiple, reporter blogs. On 67 of the newspaper websites (83 percent of the blogs), readers can commetn on these reporter blog entries.
  • … Only 19 of the newspapers allowed readers to comment on articles, …
  • Major Web tools pentrated both the most and the least circulated papers. …

PDF version of the study at the Bivings Blog.

Other have joined in for similar studies for Italy and the UK.

A more collaborative effort using a Wiki was started in Germany. I think this is the right approach in order to keep up with new and additional fetures as well as modifications on the newspapers websites. Maybe the findings should be integrated into the the respective wikipedia entries for the newspapers.