A new report in into the Newspaper industry in the US provides some interesting insights. You can download the full report here. Some of their key findings were:
- Newspapers are experimenting with user generated content. The study found that 58 percent of newspapers allowed for user generated photos, while 18 percent accepted video and 15 percent articles. Overall, 58 percent of newspapers offered some form of user generated content in 2008 compared to 24 percent in 2007.
- Research shows that the number of newspaper websites allowing users to comment on articles has more than doubled in the last year. Seventy five percent of newspapers now accept article comments in some form, compared to 33 percent in 2007.
- Ten percent of newspapers had social networking tools, such as user profiles and the ability to “friend” other users, built into their sites in 2008. This compares to five percent of sites that included this feature in 2007. It is surprising that this number isn’t higher.
- Seventy six percent of newspapers offered a Most Popular view of content in some form (Most Emailed, Most Blogged, Most Commented, etc.). This compares to 51 percent in 2007 and 33 percent in 2006.
- Integration with external social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us has increased dramatically the last few years. Ninety-two percent of newspapers now include this option compared to only seven percent in 2006.
The interesting thing for me is that we are seeing a reduction in the need for users to register to be able to access full stories (11% of the newspapers surveyed required registration as opposed to 27% in 2007). This illustrates that newspapers are having to explore alternative methods of generating online revenues. Simply getting users to register and then bombarding then with targeted online advertising isn't going to work. Now there's a surprise!
