24/7 Wall St measured the Top 25 US Newspaper (in circulation) by
- strength of content
- ease of use and navigation
- use of new web technology including comments sections, message boards, and multimedia,
- lay-out
- presence of a strong set of current advertisers
- the size of their audiences
and delivers findings and ratings from A to D-
Douglas A. McIntyre concludes his review:
"The most important conclusion from this review of online newspaper sites is how uneven the quality is from property to property. Some of the smaller papers which probably have modest resources have done an extremely good job of engaging readers, using the best tools of the internet, and putting up content which adds to the experience of the subscriber to the physical newspaper. Some of these sites are likely to draw multiple visits from the same person throughout the day, the Holy Grail of online content behavior. Other sites seem to be designed to keep readers away Other sites seem to be designed to keep readers away.
There is clearly not much benchmarking going on in the online part of the newspaper industry, and with the increasing risk that more newspapers will fail, not using a standardized measurement of excellence for improvement is a real shame."
via / the ranking / at Online News Squared (tm)
Review at 24/7 Wallstreet
Looking beyond what is there ... How readers and advertiser honor the effort
Nachtrag:
The new edition of Biving's 2008 Newspaper Website study is under way. Samantha Strauss is asking here what (else) should be included .... (2007)
Some earlier entries:
News(Paper) Interactivity Index
Online Features US Top 100 Newspaper
Update Zeitungsstudie 'Was Zeitungen im Web machen'
