South African Newspaper Study

We received some more feedback from our newspaper study we conducted last August.  For the Media posted an entry today about how South African newspapers are using the Web.

The two most surprising things from this research:  Of 19 South African newspapers, just one offers a blog(s) and just over half (10 papers) are using RSS.  I guess this blogger was correct in stating that South African papers have a ways to go in terms of their Web use.

In addition to looking for the features tested in our study, For the Media expanded the research to include Mobile phone alerts and newsletters, email newsletters, and email alerts. 

Here's a breakdown of the features and the percentage of papers using each tool:

RSS Feed: 52.6%
RSS for different sections: 10.5%
RSS includes ads:
Most Popular: 5.26%
Video: 10.5%
Podcast: 10.5%
Chats: 5.26%
Blogs: 5.26%
Blog Comments: 0
Blogroll:5.26%
Comments on Articles: 5.26%
Registration Required: 31.6%
Bookmarking: 5.26%
Message Boards: 15.8%
Email Newsletter: 10.5%
Email Alerts: 5.26%
Mobile Phone Alerts: 5.26%
Mobile Phone Newsletter: 5.26%

I have two questions related to this research.  For most of the tools, just one or two papers are using various Web tools.  Are the same papers consistently using the Web tools, or is use of various features spread over the whole sample of papers?  Also, I find it quite surprising that given the quality of these websites that 31% of the papers are requiring registration.  What exactly are people registering for? 

Reminder:  Check out the various research related to the newspaper study which has lots of information regarding newspaper research in different countries:

• Italy
• Denmark: here and here
• Japan
• Canada
• New Zealand 
• UK 

 Also check out our TBR wiki, which has an entire section dedicated to ways that newspapers can improve their websites.