News organization that haven’t yet incorporated Facebook into their news distribution strategy might want to change course, and soon. According to research from Hitwise, Facebook is now the fourth-ranked source of visits to news and media sites, behind Google, Yahoo and MSN. Facebook overtook Google News as a source of news site visits last year and is miles ahead of Google Reader. Some are already…
An editorial study conducted by the Seattle Times looked at how contextual advertising (affinity to content determines ad placement) impacted readers’ perceptions of online news content. It found most readers were comfortable with contextual ads in sections focused on softer news – like sports, travel and entertainment – but were not happy to see them next to hard news stories about…
As part of a newly launched study into the future of media, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has posted a lengthy, hyperlinked collection of recent studies and articles on media’s future from a wide range of (American) sources.
Complaints by media proprietors like Rupert Murdoch that Google News is “stealing” their content has always been countered by the argument that Google and other news aggregators actually direct web traffic back to orignating news sites. However, a survey of news consumers by Outsell Inc. found 44 per cent of Google News visitors scan headlines without ever clicking…
An ITZ/Belden Interactive study of reader sign-up rates at 26 U.S. dailies that put their online versions behind a paywall found the average number of online subscribers amounted to just 2.4 per cent of print subscribers, Alan Mutter reports on his Reflections of a Newsosaur blog.
Although the Internet has spawned a vast increase in news sources, almost all news is still gathered by traditional media, suggests a study by the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. The study, which tracked how news was gathered and circulated through more than 53 news outlets during a week last year in Baltimore, discovered…
Say farewell to the TV generation. The Internet is our new addiction. In a recent survey by market researcher Synovate, 88 per cent of Canadian respondents said they could not live without Internet access or would miss it a lot, compared to just 70 per cent who felt the same about television. What would Neil Postman say?
A study of Twitter usage by the top 100 U.S. newspapers found that while all hosted feeds, almost 40 per cent didn’t link to those feeds from their websites. The Bivings Group study also reported many newspaper tweeters did not make effective use of the social media application’s reply capabilities to interact with readers.
Recent articles of interest published in scholarly journals: “Evaluating Journalism: Towards an assessment framework for the practice of journalism,” by Ivor Shapiro, Journalism Practice 4 (2), April 2010 “The Globe on Saturday, The World on Sunday: Toronto weekend editions and the influence of the American Sunday paper, 1886-1895“, by Sandra Gabriele and Paul Moore, Canadian…
With ad revenues slumping and web readership growing, news industry leaders are again mulling over making people pay to read online news. Two consulting companies recently released results of their own studies into consumer preparedness to pay for news and the results are … inconlusive. The Boston Consulting Group polled more than 5,000 people in nine countries and concluded many consumers would pay a…