Newspapers finally embracing web 2.0

U.S. newspapers are finally embracing Web 2.0 in their web operations, according to a major survey. But is it too late?

Every year, The Bivings Group conducts a study of the web features of America’s largest newspapers as a way to gauge how papers are dealing with the threat and opportunity presented by the rise of the Internet as a news source.

This year’s report was published today and documents radical and rapid changes among how newspaper companies connect to the readers on their web sites.

Here are some of the findings:

• 58 percent of newspapers offered some form of user-generated content in 2008 compared to 24 percent in 2007.
• More than twice as many newspapers allow their readers to post comments online. In 2007 only 33 percent of newspapers allowed this; the percentage now has risen to 75.
• 76 percent of the newspapers offered some form of “most popular” list of the content, as compared to 51 percent in 2007.
• 92 percent included a way to share articles on social bookmarking sites, such as Digg.com and Delicious.com.  This percentage was only seven in 2006!
• In 2007 as many as 29 percent of newspapers required users to register to read full articles. This percentage dropped to 11 in 2008.
• Still slow: Only 10 percent of the newspapers had social networking tools, such as user profiles and the ability to “friend” other users, on their sites. In 2007 the percentage was 5.

All in all: These are indeed radical changes in only one year!

The question, though, is still whether it is too late. In contrast to the Scandinavian countries, for instance, U.S. newspapers are not dominating the top list in the American market. Will they ever be able to take the number one position, as the VG newspaper has in Norway?

It is impossible to say. Only one thing is for sure, as ReadWriteWeb points out: Mainstream news will never be the same again.

Although moving in the right direction, newspaper executives will still need some crisis advice.  Journalists must be prepared  to take on new roles.  And the media sites must explore new tasks, like aggregating content from other sources and redefining the concept of news to include users’ personal feeds.

Tagged as: journalism, media, newspapers, social media, user involvement