U.S. Weekly Newspapers Embrace Web Sites

Newspaper Research Journal, Fall 2007 by Adams, Jennifer Wood

At about half of the weekly newspapers (50.5 percent), the news department is responsible for producing the online edition, followed by a Webmaster/Web editor/Web manager at 15.9 percent of the papers, the production department at 14.7 percent, outsourced with 6.3 percent and "other" at 12.6 percent. More than a third (38.2 percent) did not have anyone on staff whose primary responsibility is to work for the online newspaper, while another 36 percent had one person dedicated to the online product. The other 25.8 percent had two to five staffers who primarily work for the online edition.

R1: What is the current status of the online edition at U.S. weekly newspapers and what do the newspaper managers list as the benefits of having a Web edition?

The respondents reported that most of their online content comes from stories that appear in the print edition. Almost 60 percent of the respondents indicated that they do not have original content in the Web editions, meaning content that has not or will not be published in the print edition. Of the 40 percent that do publish original online content, the average percentage of original content is less than 10 percent. Only two newspapers reported having at least 50 percent of original content in their online editions. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of the newspapers publish at least half of their print stories in the online edition and 60 percent said they publish news in the online edition before it is published in the print edition.

Most of the respondents (59.4 percent) reported that, under normal news flow conditions, content is uploaded to the Web site weekly. Another 20.8 percent said they update content every two to three days, 11.9 percent said daily, 5 percent said every other day and 3 percent said five days a week.

Overwhelmingly, weekly newspapers do not require users to register before being allowed to enter the site (84.8 percent) nor do they make users pay for a subscription to view the online newspaper (87.9percent).Also, only 15.2 percent of newspapers charge users to view specific content, such as story archives or classifieds.

More than half of the newspapers (57.7 percent) offer interactive features on their Web sites, while 41.2 percent do not. Those who answered yes were asked what type of interactive features they offered. Multiple responses were allowed. The top five most popular interactive features are: polls or surveys (28 newspapers/49 percent), message boards, reader forums or blogs (17 newspapers/29.8 percent), feedback forms, such as comments, guestbook or e-mail newsroom (14 newspapers/24.6 percent), online advertisement placement (10 newspapers/17.5 percent) and online forms, such as engagement, wedding, obituary or subscription forms (nine newspapers/15.8 percent). [See Table 1]

The respondents were asked how they produce their online newspaper. Thirty-five percent said they produce it in-house, 34 percent said they use a template-based design purchased from a third-party vendor, 14.5 percent said they outsource the production of the site, 5.2 percent indicated it is designed by the parent company and 11.3 percent indicated it is designed by a combination of the above.