For those of you interested in the whole "Did Lieberman's Website Get Hacked" mystery, TPMuckraker.com has a pretty geeky article about the hosting setup of Lieberman's host provider and another where they interview Lieberman's techies about the situation.  TBG was interviewed in the one about Lieberman's technical setup  (thanks to our developers for helping me pull together answers). 

I hope they find whoever did this (assuming they got hacked) and punish them appropriately.  No place for this sort of nonsense.

We've been happily surprised by the response to our recent newspaper study.  The most exciting part has been the additional research that other bloggers have performed in their home countries.  So far, sister studies have been performed in Italy, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.  The response is an example of all that is great about the Internet.

Given the response, we'd like to formally ask bloggers to perform studies in their home countries.  Note we're working on Japan now.  If you perform a study, please post the results to your blog.  We'll write a post about the results in your country and then, once we reach critical mass, we'll put together a global study that seeks to identify global trends.  We'll also post a running list of the countries we have studies for on our blog.  Thanks in advance for your help and participation!

Details regarding what criteria we looked at are after the jump.

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We found another study of international newspapers this morning, this time from New Zealand.  Web designer and journalist Fraser Mills saw our study of US papers as well as the Italian study and UK study, and decided to do some research of his own.  Here is his chart summarizing his results:

Fraser's results help to reiterate our theory that the US is leading the pack in terms of Web use by newspapers.

We received some more help this morning in our newspaper research.  This time, it came from the UK, where BBC English Regions Community Producer Robin Hamman put together some research looking at the UK's top 11 newspapers.  Here is a chart summarizing his findings (click on the graph for a larger view):

To compare, here is a similar chart showing the results from the top ten US papers.  The legend on the right shows the newspaper name and rank (click on the graph for a larger view).

As you can see from the charts, the results are reasonably even, except in the categories relating to video, podcasts and journalist blogs, where the US papers beat out the UK papers.  More UK papers offer message boards and forums than the top 10 US papers.

We'll keep plugging away at the international research and hopefully will have some interesting conclusions.

After we published our study of America's newspapers last week, it was picked up by many international blogs, and compared to newspapers in several countries, including Brazil, Denmark, and Italy.

We found the following Italian blog post, which reports the findings of a new study that examined the top 50 Italian newspapers, published August 7.  An Italian journalist, Lele Dainesi, reported the findings, which orginally appeared on the Italian blog "Pandemia", on his own blog, Mash Ups in Italy.  Apparently our study inspired an Italian blogger to pursue the sister study.  Below is a graph that compares the results of the 25 most circulated papers in the US with the top 25 Italian papers.  The chart also includes stats from papers ranking 75-100 on our list of America's 100 most circulated newspapers. The results are pretty interesting, and show that even the the least circulated papers are offering more Web tools on their sites that the most popular Italian papers: 

Here are some other key results from the study of the top 50 Italian newspapers:

• 19 of the top 50 Italian papers required registration (compared to 23 of the top 100 American papers)
• 12 of the top 50 Italian papers offered forums (compared to 64 of the top 100 American papers)
• Only 3 Italian papers offered podcasts, and only 8 offered blogs (compared to 31 and 80, respectively, here in the States). 

You can view the report here (in Italian, PDF), or Lele's blog here.

A few Danish blogs, (Whyse and Problog) noted the importance of using blogs in today's age of Web 2.0, and regretfully describe how Danish newspapers have been slow to pick up on the blogging trend. 

Based on these pickups, it seems that American newspapers might be setting the bar as far as newspaper sites around the world go.  I think that we will be conducting some additional research to get some more details on this topic…stay tuned.

If you post an online poll on a political topic there is a 99% chance that someone will try manipulate the results.  In 2004, literally minutes after each Presidential debate ended, liberal and conservative bloggers posted links to the inevitable "Who Won the Debate" polls that ran on sites like CNN, MSNBC, etc.  Both parties/campaigns posted links to these polls on their websites and sent out emails encouraging people to weigh in for their candidate.  Inevitably, online political polls end up being less a real barometer of opinion than a test of which side can get the most people to vote.  (Sort of like a real election, actually).

So I knew all that when I posted a poll yesterday on which Senate campaign had the best blog.  But given how modest our blog is I didn't think people would bother to manipulate the results.  However, within a few hours, a Santorum supporter figured out a way to vote 30 times (we have since made this impossible).  And now Sheldon Whitehouse supporters are spamming the comments area of the entry. 

So, like all online polls, our poll here is for recreational purposes only and has no redeeming value.  At this point, I would encourage all the campaigns involved to try to manipulate the results.  Ultimately, the campaign with the best blog is probably the one who can get the most people to vote for them in an online poll. 

In my last post I took a look at which Senate campaign blogs were linked to the most often by bloggers.  Following are the top 5 in terms of links:

Pete Ashdown (D-UT)
Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
Jack Carter (D-NV)
Rick Santorum (R-PA)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

After you've given them a look, vote in the poll below. Leave any thoughts you may have on the blogs in the comments area.

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Erin has done a great job of reviewing the features and content of the various blogs being run by 2006 candidates for the United States Senate. Her research got me thinking about how influential/successful these campaign blogs actually are. How many people are reading them? How many people are linking to them? How well networked are they? Are they working? These questions are pretty much impossible to answer in an academically defensible way: we'd need access to the logs of all the campaign blogs to answer adequately. We're left picking through anecdotes.

So I decided to use the blog search engine Technorati to find some of these anecedotes. Without further ado, following are the criteria I looked at followed by the results. (more…)

Mark Glaser of the PBS blog MediaShift gave our newspaper study a nice shoutout today.  Here's an excerpt from the article he wrote about us:

"Though newspaper websites have been around for a decade, they’ve often been slow to innovate, and have been mainly used for “shovelware” — repurposing the same print stories online. But now, times are changing, and newspapers are perking up and realizing they’re going to have to do more online if they want to compete with the TV network and cable news sites, international newspaper sites, and aggregators such as Yahoo and Google."

I really like Mark's "shovelware" terminology.  Despite newspapers' use of Web 2.0 and their innovations, much of the online content is similar to that of the print content.  Thereis even one newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, whose website is based on an electronic copy of the print newspaper. 

So thanks again to Mark for the great article!

After finishing our study of America's top 100 newspapers and their use of the Web, I took a closer at the top 20 most circulated papers and tried to pick a few favorites. To be honest, this was a difficult task. Most newspaper websites are adequate and have similar formats. The differences lie in content, ease of navigation, and Web offerings.

For example, the website template used by the Philadelphia Enquirer was also used by the Miami Herald, the Kansas City Star, The San Jose Mercury News, and several others. There were a handful of other templates that several newspapers used, including that used by the NJ Star Ledger and the Michigan Grand Rapids Press. This template was quite common among the top 100 US papers.

To find the overall best Web experience, go to the New York Times website (#3 on our list of most-circulated papers). It's easy to navigate, and interactive features such as blogs and podcasts are extremely easy to find. They also have a wide selection of podcasts to choose from. However, that experience does not come without a price. Users have to register to read New York Times articles online. While basic registration is free, it does not let readers to view all the site's content. In order to gain access to everything the site has to offer, users have to sign up for Times Select for $50/year. Because of this, I couldn't pick the NYT website as my winner.

Maybe I'm biased because I live in Washington DC, but my vote for the best newspaper website goes to the Washington Post. They have informative content, a network of blogs, several podcasts, and another feature that I didn't notice on many other newspaper site. Next to every article there is a box labeled "Who's Blogging?", with Technorati links to the most popular bloggers who blogged about that particular Washington Post article. After the Post's debacle with comments earlier this year, this seems like a good way to encourage interactivity on the site without leaving the site open to comments that need to be moderated.

For the best blog network, check out the Boston Globe. They have the largest selection of blogs out of the top 100 newspapers hands down. They have a series of 28 reporter blogs, including several different news blogs, an individual blog for every area sports team, arts and entertainment, job openings, and others. In addition to Globe reporter blogs, they also offer a long list of other popular Boston-area blogs. Definitely worth a peek.

If forums/message boards is more your speed, you definitely need to visit the NJ Star Ledger's website. Kind of a dark horse at #17 on our list of 100 papers, this paper's overall website is nothing out of the ordinary. But, it has a massive series of forums that covers everything from high school sports to local news to, believe it or not, pets. I read some recent posts on a few of the forums, all of which seem popular, and the discussions got pretty heated…especially for high school sports.

For podcasts, check out the Arizona Republic. They have 21 podcasts listed on their site, which was the most that I noticed next to the New York Times.

I also found it noteworthy that the otherwise popular New York Daily News and New York Post (#6 and #7 on our list of 100 papers, respectively) seemed to be sub-par in their Web offerings. Neither site has any Web features to speak of, and their vertical, oversized picture strategy doesn't translate well to the Web. It was interesting to see how the same features that make these papers so popular in print are the same features that made them seem tabloid-y and cheesy on the Web.

Tech News World has an article today about the role of the Internet in the energy debate. They interviewed our very own Erin Teeling about whether politicians were using the Internet to discuss energy issues with their consituents. The short answer is that they are not - most political sites are focused on disseminating information to constituents in a top down fashion, not engaging in conversations. Here's one of Erin's quotes from the article:

"In some cases, the blogs are so bad that candidates might be better off not using a blog at all," she observed. "It is evident from our research that politicians are just not ready to give up control. Opening blogs to [reader] comments and attempting to address real issues on their Web sites, such as energy and ANWR, leaves candidates open for criticism. Campaign Web sites are supposed to be a central location where supporters can go to take action on behalf of their favorite candidate, so campaigns do not want to run the risk of negative material appearing on their sites," Teeling concluded.

You can read the article here.

Update: We've issued a call for help in conducting research in additional countries.  Learn how you can help.

After the success of our recent study, The Internet's Role in Political Campaigns, we decided to perform a study on America's newspapers. It is widely known that America's newspapers are suffering from declining readership and circulation. In many cases, this is occurring due to the availability of alternative forms of news and the changing habits of Americans. The Internet and the prevalence of free news sites, including newspaper sites and larger network sites, such as CNN, MSNBC, and Yahoo, are often credited with playing a major role in the problems experienced by the newspaper industry. In our most recent study, The Use of the Internet by America's Newspapers, we researched the websites of America's top 100 newspapers by circulation, and evaluated them based on their use of 14 different Web 2.0 features. These criteria were comprehensive, and included a wide variety of Web tools, such as reporter blogs, video and podcasts, message boards, and RSS feeds. We pursued this study in order to determine whether newspapers are trying to compete with the Internet or use it to expand readership over a different medium. The results of our research clearly showed that America's newspapers, unlike political candidates, are generally embracing the Internet and are using new and improving Web tools to their advantage. Here are some of our results:

• 80 of the nation's top 100 newspapers offered reporter blogs. On 63 of these blogs, readers could comment on posts written by reporters.
• 76 of the nation's top 100 newspapers offer RSS feeds on their websites. All of these feeds are partial feeds, and none included ads.
• Major Web tools, such as blogs and RSS penetrated both the most and least circulated newspapers.
• Video was the most common form of multimedia found on the websites, and was offered by 61 of the newspapers.

Based on these findings and others, it seems that today's newspapers are making a significant effort to reach Web-focused audiences with mediums that are relevant to today's virtual society. Take a look at our study and let us know what you think!