At the New Communications Forum conference last week, Chris O’Brien from the San Jose Mercury News mentioned during a presentation that 2/3rds of the traffic to the paper’s website comes from news aggregators (like Google News) and search engines.  This figure was higher than I expected, so I mentally filed away the tidbit to write about at some point.

Then today I came across a site called Newsknife, which breaks down which newspaper websites have the most articles appear in Google News.  I found this fascinating, so I quickly compared the twenty five newspapers that appeared most often in Google News with a list of the twenty five largest newspapers in terms of print circulation.  A couple of quick things jumped out at me:

• The Mercury News, Washington Times and Akron Beacon Journal were the papers that performed the best in Google News as compared to their print circulation.  For the Mercury News and Washington Times, I’d guess they do well because both papers have a lot of content niche news topics (silicon valley and politics) that are very popular on time.  So it makes sense that Google News might have a lot of their stories.  I have no idea why the Akron Beacon Journal is in Google News so much.
• The Wall Street Journal and Rocky Mountain News were the largest newspapers that did not appear on the list of top newspapers sites in Google News.  I suspect the Journal will start showing up soon given their recent deal with Google.  I don’t know what is going on with the Rocky Mountain News.

However, I was mostly left slightly baffled as to what to make of the data and why certain sites performed better than others.  How important is optimizing for Google News?  What is the impact of registration walls?  How important is the topics that are covered?  I think these questions are important to answers, as, based on the figures from the Mercury News, performance in search engines and news aggregators plays a huge role in the success or failure of a newspapers online program.  I’ll try to write more on this later after the data has a chance to sink in.

Anyway, below is the raw data.  Please share any thoughts you have in the comments.

I gave a presentation earlier today at the New Communications Forum conference in Santa Rosa, CA on how well traditional media (newspapers and magazines) are adapting their Internet programs based on the challenges presented by the web and social media.

During my talk, I reviewed the results of our newspaper and magazine studies that examined the Web 2.0 features these media properties include on their websites.  I also reviewed examples of some of the cooler things media organizations are doing on the web. 

When giving these presentations, you try to force yourself to reach some sort of coherent conclusion.  In the case of my presentation, I have to try to answer this question: “What will newspaper and magazine websites look like in five  years?”  The truth is that I don’t know and I don’t really think anyone does. 

Our studies tell the story of an industry in transition.   

Some bigger properties, like the Washington Post and New York Times, have the budgets and commitment from management to experiment.  They launch new web programs and cut the ones that don’t work and keep the ones that do.  Some smaller papers, presumably unencumbered by layers of bureaucracy, are also experimenting and doing great things.   Other publications are suffering from institutional inertia and not doing much of anything.  Web-based companies like Digg and Techmeme are breaking their own ground.

What newspapers websites look like in five years will be the story of these various experiments.

For those of you that are gluttons for punishment, my presentation is embedded below.  As you’ll see, in the future I should probably take help from our design team.  Notes regarding some of the slides are embedded beneath the slide deck.

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Today the Newseum , Washington's museum about the news, is officially opening to the public. 

I was able to visit the museum a few weeks ago since a friend of mine is a volunteer there, and many things interested me about it.  One of the most prominent thoughts that I walked away with was although the museum mainly focuses on newspapers and TV news, it devoted what I consider a surprising amount of attention to new media. 

There are exhibits that explored the heated debate about whether how blogging can fit into journalism and vice versa.  In fact, I walked out with the impression that — at least in the eyes of the Newseum — some blogging is solid journalism. 

Of course, personalities like the original Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox herself, and Matt Drudge were featured.  Further a major focus of the Bloomberg Internet, TV and Radio Gallery is how the Internet has affected journalism.

Unsurprisingly, many major news organizations are ogling over a museum devoted to glorify their business, and hopefully, its emphasis on new media will help alleviate some of the resistance of some journalists and organizations to the burgeoning importance of new media — from blogging to podcasts to flash presentations.

While there is plenty of discussion out their about how news organizations of all types are trying to handle the migration of eyeballs, ears, and advertising dollars to the Internet, there's another important issue — especially when considering news content distributors like NPR and their relationship with their affiliates.  Since similar organizations like the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters also have news sites of their own, it is important to ask: How can distributing and producing content on the Internet help both the distributor and affiliate? 

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Last week on Thursday, February 21, a 6.0 earthquake rocked northern Nevada and was felt in Idaho and Utah as well.  In response, the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a traditional article about the event.  However, its coverage didn't stop there.

The paper decided to ask readers who felt the quake to describe what they noticed and where they were at the time.  These responses were mapped on a MapBuilder map to give a graphic representation of where people felt the earth shake. 

In Monday's E-Media Tidbits column, Amy Gahran of The Poynter Institute highlighted this nifty map.  Kim McDaniel of the Tribune explained to her that this map wasn't originally designed to examine the quake; it was originally used in November to show where holiday lights were located in the Salt Lake area.  After the quake hit, she and her team had a great idea and implemented it.

It is very important to note that newspapers of all sizes can launch great interactive tools.  This ability is not reserved for large papers like the New York Times that can create sexy flash presentations like the one about box office data that Todd mentioned yesterday. 

Granted, it is easier said than done, but creativity and fast thinking — sometimes coupled with services like MapBuilder — can go a long way for any newspaper trying to report better and connect with its audience in meaningful ways.

I learned about an interesting social network the other day that will interest Bivings Report readers who follow how news is reported on the Internet; it is for tech savvy journalists who want to improve their general reporting skills and better contribute to the field — even if they have few resources.

The network is called Wired Journalists.  Check it out.

After the New York Times abandoned Times select last Fall, making all of the content on its site free, the assumption was that it was just a matter of time before the Wall Street Journal followed suit and went to a free model. Today, the Wall Street Journal rebelled against all those assumptions and confirmed that most of its content will continue to be behind a pay wall. Chairman Rupert Murdoch is quoted as saying:

We are going to greatly expand and improve the free part of the Wall Street Journal online, but there will still be a strong offering for subscribers. The really special things will still be a subscription service, and, sorry to tell you, probably more expensive.

I’m of the opinion that most publications should embrace the free content model online. But I also think the Wall Street Journal probably made the correct business decision here.

While technically a newspaper, the Wall Street Journal’s focus on finance makes it a must read for anyone interested in the topic. It is largely a niche paper providing coverage people perceive that they can’t get elsewhere. In addition, the niche they cover - finance - is one that people have repeatedly proven they will pay for. Bloomberg has made obscene amounts of money covering this sector. I have no idea what the break down is, but I imagine a significant number of WSJ subscribers are companies ordering multiple copies as a business expense. It is one of the two or three newspapers that I’ve gotten at every office I’ve worked at and can buy at any airport.

So it makes sense to me that the WSJ can charge for access to its content. But I think it is very much the exception and not the rule.

My friend Kevin Anderson, who is over blogging and interaction at The Guardian in the UK, is experimenting with Seesmic, a new video site that is still in its private alpha stage.

Although I don't have access to the site yet, it seems like the child of a marriage between YouTube and a message board.  While you can respond to videos with videos on other sites, it appears that Seesmic is focused on getting people to interact through video.  Uploading and viewing videos is only a small part of participating on the site.

Understanding this expectation, Kevin is using the site to converse with the site's small community to discuss the US Elections, and he is getting some interesting responses.  If you check out his post about this experiment, you can see how people have reacted to his initial questions for readers to respond. 

It'll be interesting to see if a larger community will respond in such a way as this small — which has to be tech savvy — is.  Perhaps this is a great future tool for newspapers.

The desire to cover local communities is nothing new to newspapers.  However, it is hard for a paper that covers a large area to focus on events that are happening in all neighborhoods in the circulation area.  Time, page space, and budgets all constrain such coverage, but some papers are finding ways to cover hyperlocal news.

In the cover story of the Newspaper Association of America's January 8 issue of Presstime, "Cover Story: 8 Trends to Track in ’08," we can learn about newspapers that are succeeding in covering communities.  See the eighth trend.

The article spotlights how The Dallas Morning News works with community members to publish information on its neighborsgo sites.  People submit content through this site, and some of it makes into print and on the newspaper's homepage. 

Oscar Martinez, managing editor of neighborsgo, told Presstime that these hyperlocal sections act as "17 small-town papers."  Further, when mentioning the role of the public, he also said, "We're saying, 'This is your turn to speak up first, and we'll take it from there…' We're not creating a need to share information. We're providing tools to be able to do so."

That's the great thing about the Internet. It facilitates connections between people and those with their sources of news.  That's one of many ways that the Internet can help newspapers. 

My friend Kevin Anderson, an online journalist, wrote an interesting post titled "What is an online journalist?" yesterday on his blog Strange Attractor.

The gist of the post focuses on how it is still common in contemporary journalistic culture to feel that the Internet is not a medium suited for unique quality news reporting and analysis.  Of course, it is a great place to repurpose, publish, or post reporting from other media, but true journalism supposedly cannot originate in the digital realm.

With newspaper ad revenue and dropping, radio and television audiences declining in both quantity and attention paid to specific sources, and a burgeoning amount of sources providing news, news companies and journalists cannot afford to ignore the value of online journalism.  Beyond the fact that the medium lends its well to more up to date and in depth reporting in ways that print and broadcast outlets can't match, more and more people are turning to the Internet as a primary news source.

Hopefully, in 2008, more journalists will realize this and value the online medium by viewing it as a complement to their work and not a threat.

Last week, NewMediaAge.co.uk reported that The Economist magazine intends to launch a social network.  This partly stems from its Project Red Stripe that aimed to produce something innovative with the company's expansive library of quality content but then fizzled with hopes of an altruistic social site.  While the idea is noble, there are many other sites out their now that connect people those who they can help.

For awhile I thought that news sites creating their own social networking site was great since it would help them lure audience members back more often, but now I'm wary of another social networking site.

The concept is not flawed; it is just the idea that I'll have to create another profile, remember more usernames and passwords, and try to woo my associates to do the same that seems so laborious.

Perhaps the magazine could partner with an existing social networking site that many of its readers are either members of or would benefit from joining.  I understand concerns about relying on another company to handle your information and that of your customers as well as branding issues, but if my sentiments are shared by many other people, forget the success of a social networking venture.

Now, who could The Economist partner with?  MySpace and Facebook probably aren't great possible partners since neither are designed for sustained conversations and debates.  The same goes for LinkedIn, but its professional networking emphasis does should jive well with Economist readers.  On the other hand, Gather is centered around conversation, yet, tries to appease a wide variety of folk.

Are there any other sizable social networks that would suit The Economist well?

Loren Baker of the Search Engine Journal reports that Google News has tweaked it algorithm (hat tip: MediaPost).  The search engine hopes to its users more relevant results about breaking news stories.

One of the tweaks aims to better identify the news source that was first in reporting information about a story.  Further, the tweak will better highlight fresher reporting as the story develops.

Another tweak that I find really interesting and helpful to local media outlets is that Google aims to place more emphasis on providing users with reports from media outlets whom are local to breaking news.  Thus, if there is flooding in Houston, Google wants to highlight reporting from, say, the Houston Chronicle instead of a wire report picked up by the Los Angles Times.  That is if the local coverage is at least equal in relevance to articles from elsehwere.

I think that this is great news for local news outlets since Google is explicitly trying to promote them.  Of course, this does not negate the need for local sources from working harder than larger organizations that have more resources and enjoy a larger presence on-line, but the search engine's changes could level the playing field.

Mathew Ingram yesterday proclaimed that "free is better" when it comes to news sites, and he offered new evidence to support this assertion.

He pointed to web traffic data of the New York Time's website that TechCrunch analyzed.  According to comScore data, traffic to the paper's site has surged since it ended its Times Select subscription pay wall back in September. 

Between August and October this year, site visitors increased by an impressive 64 percent along with a 52 percent growth for page views.  Clearly dropping the pay wall has boosted the traffic to the site.   

The web analytics geek in me would love to see how the average time on site per user has changed in this time period.  One would think that Times Select subscribers would spend more time on the site since they're paying for it and are probably Times fans.  If that's correct, then perhaps the average time spent on the site has dropped since people who come for free are: 1) not paying for it and 2) aren't proving loyalty already by paying a fee.

What do you think?

I read today that an editor for the blog LAist, Tony Pierce, accepted a position running about 25 blogs over at the LA Times. I thought it was interesting to see such a huge paper, with such a mixed record in the online world, making a blogger an important part of the paper's team.  There's some pretty extensive coverage about this on Friday's edition of LAist, but I thought I'd pull out a couple interesting points from an interview with Tony Pierce.

Zach: Day one, what would you like to start doing?
Tony: On day one I would like to throw out a bunch of ideas to my new boss and find out which ones she likes and which ones she thinks are lame. And then I would like to do the cool ones that we agree on. But I'm not insane, the Times is an old, established, successful organization. Things don't change as quickly as you guys probably think. LAist was a different beast. One Monday last year Jake said he wanted Food every day. Two weeks later we had food every day. I'm pretty sure a huge organization like the LAT works a tad slower.

Andy: You've been successful as the lead editor of a group blog — LAist. How will you motivate / approach the Times people to absorb your inspiration and ideas and go with it, considering the general resistance to change within age-old publications?
Tony : That is the big question. Can someone from outside of journalism inspire real pros? And can the MSM break through in the blogosphere. Currently there's not one newspaper blog in the Technorati Top 100, which is a challenge that I'm more than happy to take on.

Andy: Are there any news sites that particularly impress you as far as their approach to blogging and attracting UGC?
Tony: The Houston Chronicle has led the way for newspaper blogging and user generated content. And I really like the NYT's City Desk blog - City Room. But the entire industry has only just started to really wake up because they had resisted the whole thing for so long. Rightfully. And now that they know that digital is the way to go, it's right for them to get it together. But as that Elvis record sorta said: 100 million blogs can't be wrong.

Andy: Will you be restricted by any Times policy from what you can write about (aside from the obvious)?
Tony: Probably. I'm joining a huge corporation. Something that I am used to. I've worked for huge places before. And even being editor of LAist I toned down what topics I wrote about on my personal blog, so i have no problems with that. Since 8/11/01 when I started blogging, I've written about 7,500 posts. I've had plenty of time to rock the mic. Now I'd like to help others reach the blogosphere, because it's a great audience.

Andy: Do you have any plans to create blogs of general — not just localized — interest? For example, NYT has things like an Open Code blog, WSJ has All Things D ….
Tony: The one thing that blew my mind while I met with the Times is that they really are open to many many ideas. One of the things that we were very successful at on LAist were expanding our coverage to things outside of LA. That pissed off some readers but sometimes you just have to shrug and say **** the haters. So yes I hope the Times continues to think outside the box and continues to trust new perspectives, because now they are on a huge playing field - the web - that has a lot of wide and varied competitors who aren't restricted to certain boundaries or rules or pasts to live up to. So to compete with them you really have to play a slightly different game to a point. But the Times has had no problems going outside of LA for a lot of their best stories They are a leader in International news, therefore they should continue to learn from that success in regards to blogging about things outside of LA. Believe it or not I think that will be easier to do at the Times than at LAist.

Andy: What about hyperlocal?
Tony: Likewise they can do hyperlocal better than even the LAist because they have a full time staff of people who are used to covering the metro beat and they know who to talk to, how to get there, and how to get it written in a professional manner. At LAist I couldn't get anyone to go to that lameass Hollywood Santa parade even though a few of us live a few blocks away. So there are pluses and minuses to an all volunteer blog staff, and that night was definitely a minus.

I'll be interested to see how Tony's transition to MSM goes.  What kind of effect will he have on the LA Times?  And conversely, what kind of effect with the LA Times and MSM have on Tony Pierce?

On Monday Duncan Riley reported on TechCrunch that 17 more newspapers have joined in on Yahoo!'s partnership with local news sites; these papers include 16 regional papers owned by The New Times Company but not the NYT itself. 

A main part of this partnership is that local newspapers can buy job listings from Yahoo!'s HotJobs site.  In return the local sites upload job listings to Yahoo!'s HotJobs, and they can charge a higher price for these listings.

The idea behind this partnership seems logical.  Yahoo! gets access to more job listings that are provided by its partners while the local newspapers can offer those who purchase job listings a greater forum in which their positions are advertised on.

So far, this logic has worked out for Cox Newspapers, which owns the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  According to the Associated Press on Monday Cox has enjoyed increased revenues.  For instance, Cox owned Austin American-Statesman enjoys a "market share for online recruitment ads is now 40 percent, up 19 percentage points from a year ago."  

The fact that more papers have signed in on this partnership is an indication that it is working.  However, Yahoo! is not alone in offering such services.  For instance, Gannett and Tribune — the top two newspaper publishers (as measured by circulation) — haven't joined Yahoo! yet.  Perhaps they are too interested in their own jobs site, CareerBuilder, that they run with McClatchy — a fellow newspaper publisher.  Further, there are other jobs sites out there like Monster.  That leaves plenty of options for papers like The Washington Post, which hasn't joined in the Yahoo! partnership, to consider; that's what the paper told the AP that it's doing. 

Thus, as newspapers and advertisers alike realize that on-line ad space is growing in importance, more publishers are considering banding together to deal with advertisers.  Looking forward, if partnerships like Yahoo!'s are profitable, a key question is: Who else wants to get in the game of selling and culling on-line ad space on local news sites?