Newspapers and Mobile Websites

A report released yesterday by Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 47% of Americans are getting some of their local news via a mobile device.  Pew also found that just 11% of Americans reported having an app installed to help them get local information or news.  Of those accessing news via mobile, 51% use six or more different sources or platforms monthly to get local news and information. 

Being interested in both mobile and the news business, I had three initial reactions to this data:

1. The number of people getting local news via mobile devices is a lot higher than I would have thought.
2. The playing field for mobile is still wide open, as people are using a lot of different tools to get local news and information.  There is an opportunity here.
3. Many, many people equate mobile with apps, but the mobile space is about more than that.  Focusing exclusively on apps is short sighted.

To explore the issue further, I decided to take a quick look at the mobile websites of the 50 largest U.S. newspapers in the country by print circulation.  Specifically, I wanted to see if newspapers had bothered to create a specific mobile experience for web users and, if they had, study how compelling the experience was.  First, the straight facts:

• 92% of the 50  largest newspapers in the U.S have mobile optimized websites that could be found easily via Google search.  This figure was higher than I anticipated. 
• Of the newspapers that had mobile sites, 82% of them detected that I was on a mobile device (iPhone) and automatically served me the mobile site.  Despite having an iPhone that has a pretty good web browser, when browsing on a mobile phone I personally gravitate towards sites with mobile-friendly set ups.  It is just a better experience while on the go. 
• Surprisingly, the Washington Post, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal were among the 18% of newspapers who have mobile sites but don’t route iPhone users to the mobile version automatically.  Given the resources of these three papers, I wonder if this is a strategy as opposed to an oversight.  You can view the paper-by-paper data here.

Having scanned 45+ mobile newspaper sites, the thing that jumps out is how remarkably similar they all are.  Many are clearly built from the same design template (see slideshow at the end of the post), and even when they don’t look identical they all follow a pretty standard formula:

• A stream of the most timely headlines from the paper.
• Local time and weather information.  This makes sense given that the Pew study found that  42% of mobile device owners report getting weather updates via mobile.
• A large display style advertisement at the top of the mobile site.

Some of the mobile sites included prompts for users to download the paper’s iPhone application.  Some asked me to bookmark the site homepage on my mobile device. A few included stock tickers, traffic information and links to online video viewable on my phone.  Interestingly, none of the sites I looked at prominently featured information on local restaurants or business.  Pew found that 37% of mobile device owners use their mobile device for this purpose.  As far as I could tell none of the sites customize my experience based on my location. 

Of the sites I looked at, the New York Times and USA Today struck me as very good, with the rest all sort of bunched together in a pack.  I didn’t think any were as good as the mobile sites of properties like CNN and ESPN.  You can take a look at the homepage for all the mobile sites in the slideshow at the end of this post.

In closing, I was pleasantly surprised at the percentage of newspapers that have created mobile versions of their websites.  Newspapers are doing a good job on the fundamentals of the mobile web.  Working at an interactive agency, I also understand how hard it is to juggle developing for the mobile web with building apps for Android, iPhone, iPad and other mobile platforms.   Resources are tight, and you have to carefully pick and choose where to focus time and money.  But given how wide open the local space for mobile is, I’d love to see more innovation from newspapers and others in the coming days and months.  I think it is worth the investment.

2010 Best US Newspaper Facebook Fan Pages

This is the second installment of our 2010 Facebook Newspaper study, and features our top 10 rankings for the best and most interactive fan pages amongst U.S. newspapers. Newspapers selected were among the 100 largest in the U.S. (based on circulation). In addition to ranking each paper by the number of Facebook fans, we also looked at number of comments per post, and the variety of post on each page. The overarching intent was to create a ranking that allowed large regional newspapers to compete on an even digital playing field with large national papers.

1. The Washington Post  – The Post ranks 3rd in number of Facebook fans within the top 100 US newspapers, but it’s particularly effective form of audience engagement is what ranks it at the top of our list. It averages 41 likes and 55 comments for every post on it’s fan page wall, and maintains a very high fan-to-circulation ratio. The Post also features two custom tabs and its editors periodically use HootSuite to schedule posts and ensure a consistent stream of information to its readers.
2. The Chicago Tribune – It may be ranked 9th in the US in terms of circulation, but the Chicago Tribune has its Facebook engagement down to a science. It boasts a custom Welcome landing page, a number of newspaper-specific sub pages,as well as a discussion tab. This is in addition to it’s high average number of likes and comments on every post, and its continuous reader questions.
3. The Arizona Republic (azcentral.com web portal) – Due in part to its collaboration with AZcentral.com, the Arizona republic is ranked 3rd on this list despite having a 40% lower circulation than the first-ranked Washington Post. Its average number of likes and comments on posts (as a function of its total number of Facebook fans) shows that Arizona Republic routinely engaged a larger number of its fan base.
4. The Denver Post – This regional powerhouse newspaper has a greater number of Facebook fans than the nationally-distributed Los Angeles Times. The average number of likes and comments on newspaper’s posts are similar to newspapers with much larger circulations. Likewise, the Denver Post utilizes custom tabs to post Contests and Classifieds on its fan page.
5. San Jose Mercury News – This newspaper ranks 8th in circulation within the United States, but we’ve ranked it 5th on this list due to its consistently active Facebook fans. Often, the fan page will feature simple status updates (sans links) and will ask the readers questions or just wish them a good morning. It is this variety in fan communication that earns the Mercury News a spot in the top 5 of this list.
6. The New York Times – This is the nation’s third largest newspaper in terms of circulation, but is by far the most popular news source on Facebook with over one million fans. In fact, their number of Facebook fans actually exceeds their daily circulation – which is something no other top 100 US newspaper has accomplished. However, the number of comments and likes that their posts attain do not show proportional engagement of their one million fans.
7. The Los Angeles Times – This west coast paper’s fan base is surpassed in number by much smaller regional papers such as the Denver Post. However, its fans state engaged and its numbers of average likes and comments remain fairly high.  Distinctive feature: their posts are often published using HootSuite – as opposed to manually sent on Facebook.com.
8. The Cleveland Plain Dealer (Cleveland.com web portal) – By partnering up with the Cleveland.com web portal, the Plain Dealer’s Facebook an page become a hub of all things Cleveland-related.  The page also encourages fans to post pictures and otherwise interact with the Plain Dealer news, sports, and entertainment stories that they post.
9. USA Today    -   The page boasts an impressive number of Facebook fans and often asks their fans questions relating to the links that they are posting. However, with a circulation of over 1.8 million (and being one of the best recognized national newspapers)– one would think that USA Today can attain a higher number of fans than 38,000. 
10. The Wall Street Journal – This may be the largest US newspaper in terms of circulation (and one of the only ones with a profitable content paywall on the website) , but it’s follower and fan engagement numbers are still only a fraction of those on the NY Times Facebook page. Nonetheless, the page is frequently updates and fans are able to have lively discussions about each post.

Data for this study was collected from the middle of November until December 13th, 2010. Over 1000 total faebook fan page wall posts were analyzed to our conclusions.

Measuring Newspapers’ Facebook Engagement: A 2010 Bivings Study

The Bivings Group has just completed a newspaper online interactivity report looking at Facebook fan engagement amongst the nation’s top 100 newspapers (as determined by circulation). Our main focus was to compare large and small newspapers across the nation by looking at the number of fans that interacted with the newspaper and amongst themselves via posted content via Facebook Fan pages.

The graphic above is the first of a multi-part study unveiling on the Bivings Report which will feature information gleaned from our analysis of the likes, comments, and posts on the Facebook Fan pages of the nation’s top 100 newspapers. Over 1,000 individual wall posts were used to determine the averages seen in the above picture.

Politico’s #NextinTech and the Future of Newspapers

As better writers than I have already turned out excellent work on the tech policy discussion sponsored by Politico’s @morningtech writers and Qualcomm,  I wanted to draw some attention to what Politico, as a news organization has been doing over the last several months as compared to DC’s other news outlets. (By news outlets, I mean published in print and online.) While newspapers have come a long way since  our 2008 report on the Use of the Internet by America’s Newspapers, Politico stands out in several important regards.

1. Organizing off-line events to generate unique content and drive traffic

In the last three weeks Politico has organized two events with great speakers that attracted a significant amount of earned media. The October 25th “Political Campaigns and Social Media” panel discussion hosted at GWU was covered live by CSPAN and attended by a capacity crowd. Likewise today’s “#NextinTech” event was attended by a capacity crowd and featured discussions with US CTO Aneesh Chopra, U.S. Senators @MarkWarner and @JohnEnsign, Representatives @AnnaEshoo, ITIF’s Rob Atkinson, Google’s Pablo Chavez and Dell’s Frank Muehleman. So far it has generated at least 715 tweets by 301 influential people and several dozen high impact blog postings. (Not to mention an unknown amount of potential new subscribers for Politico Pro.)

2. Making their reporters available off-line

Outside of online Q&A sessions and their own book signings, few reporters from other news organizations make public appearances. (Local TV station and online newspaper TBD, which is also a subsidiary of Allbritton Communications being a notable exception.) I intend to do additional research to document this, but from a brief survey of colleagues in the know, similar efforts by other outlets are hard to find. For instance, the Washington Post’s website lists nothing in the way of future or past events. There are just certain things you will hear from reporters in person that you won’t online, such as that Politico’s Ben Smith is often frustrated by the trolling and off-topic comments on his blog. Things like this are objectively true, yet not something really worth him writing or complaining about.

3. Adapting 50-Cent’s Business Model

Don’t let the ‘Biblical Strategies’ title scare you, Michael Holmes does a great job of summarizing how 50-Cent used a mixture of ambition, hustling, finding a way to stand out, having testers and turning adversity into opportunity and achieve success. A lot of these theories have been applied in some manner or fashion by Politico, such as how Mike Allen’s Playbook endeared itself to a unique and powerful audience, which in turn generated a NYT profile, that generated even more subscribers and  has at least given Politico’s new paid content- Politico Pro a chance at succeeding where others pay-walls have not.

Recommend write-ups:

Grant Gross at PCWorld: “Some Tech Issues May Move Forward in Congress.”

“ From 1994 to 2000, Republicans controlled Congress and a Democrat, Bill Clinton, was president, yet several major pieces of tech-related bills passed during that time, Atkinson…Legislation passing during that period included the Telecommunications Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Electronic Signature Act, and Congress passed new high-skill immigration rules and significantly increased money for tech-related research.”

Alex Howard at gov20.govfresh: “US CTO Chopra on what’s next in tech: open government, spectrum policy, HIT, learning IT.”

”First, it’s clear that Chopra and the Obama administration is thinking about online privacy, with the recently announced Internet privacy committee. There are open questions about how much portfolio, budget, subpoena power or other authority any new position would hold, but it’s an area to watch. Chopra said that he had met with Representative Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and had found him supportive of privacy policy.”

Top Newspapers Ranked by Twitter Followers

Jeremy Porter from Journalistics has a post up where he breaks down the top 25 newspapers as measured by Twitter followers.  Below are the top 5 accounts, according to his research.

1. @nytimes – 2,668,948
2. @wsj – 464,591
3. @washingtonpost – 204,514
4. @latimes – 83,335
5. @usatoday – 72,929

We’ve covered this ground a bit ourselves in the past, so I found his post both interesting and troubling. 

First the interesting part. 

He finds the New York Times now has more Twitter followers than print subscribers.  Wow. 

Also, while I think he missed some newspapers and accounts, the dominance of the New York Times on Twitter is hard to dispute.  In addition to the main New York Times account he lists, the NYT has a variety of other topic specific accounts that have well over 100,000 followers each.  Brand still matters, and the Old Gray Lady’s brand still has some life.

On the troubling side, the methodology here is really flawed and this list should be taken as entirely anecdotal.  All he has done is found the main Twitter accounts of major newspapers and listed the number of followers.  This ranking methodology doesn’t take into account the many, many different Twitter strategies being employed by newspapers and media in general.

Lots of newspapers don’t really promote an overall Twitter feed and instead push topic specific feeds that attract tons of followers.  Lots of papers have chosen to promote the accounts of individual reporters and columnists instead of accounts for the paper themselves.

So you can’t really measure how a newspaper is using Twitter by looking at a single, central account.  To perform a meaningful study, you’d really need to look at the potentially hundreds of different accounts that make up a newspapers Twitter universe.  Hopefully someone will take on that larger research project at some point so we can get some meaningful data on how newspaper are using Twitter.