Newspapers in black and white, Jon S. Photo: Creative Commons.
On the whole, newspapers, broadcasters and digital-native publishers hold a few things in common: Most are online, serve advertising, and have a Facebook profile.
But not all share even those attributes. About one in ten local news outlets do not have a website. Some outlets do not have a presence on Facebook. And there are even some local news outlets that seem to have leapfrogged past web 1.0 and straight to social media.
In many other respects, the digital footprint of a local news outlet can be predicted by the identity of its legacy platform. Video and audio content makes an appearance on many local news websites, though mostly on those operated by broadcasters. Some local news outlets offer comment sections below their online news stories, but these skew heavily toward text-friendly newspaper websites, rather than those of television stations. Indeed, the notion of platform convergence, at least in local news, is only partially realized.
Media attention to the “duopoly” dominating the digital advertising market has focused more on Facebook than on Google. But the latter’s many tentacles in the online local news space are striking. Not only are publishers indexed in Google’s search engine and their pages’ loading times optimized by Google’s AMP project, but Google advertising services appear on many local news websites. Further, nearly half of all local news websites that offer online video host it on YouTube, which is owned by Google. It’s a reminder of the degree to which the fortunes of local news are bound up in the whims of a few big technology companies.
Individual local media sectors find themselves in 2018 at varying stages of digital advancement. But the largest of these—community weekly papers—is in many ways lagging behind the rest. Weeklies are half as likely as their daily counterparts to offer digital video content and newsletters, and far less likely than dailies to offer an online subscription option. They’re among the least likely of all local media to offer podcasts as well.
To be sure, not all online features are desirable or ultimately beneficial for news audiences. And different publishers serve communities with their own sets of technology habits and preferences. Digital offerings advisable for an online publisher in a large metropolitan area might not be advisable for a rural community weekly newspaper. Still, the widespread adoption of smartphones and usage of social media across nearly all sub-populations in the United States suggests that some common priorities for news publishers should be coming into focus.
There are some signs that, at least on a basic level, publishers are seeing the writing on the wall and prioritizing accordingly. For example, only about a quarter of local news outlets maintain their own mobile app, which, with some exceptions, may simply not be worth the effort to build and update. But the vast majority offer a mobile browsing experience that is optimized for small screens—an important user experience feature. Individually hosted websites—as opposed to those hosted by Google’s AMP service—continue to be slow-loading, however; a problem that risks losing audiences in today’s highly mobile and competitive attention economy.
These are some findings from a study of the digital footprint of more than 2,000 US local news outlets. While many studies have explored digital transformation of newsrooms through direct interviews, case studies and ethnography, this report attempts to tell the story of that transformation by the numbers.1 The study also offers comparative perspective between various sectors of local media—including radio and television broadcast, daily and weekly print, digital-native publishers and collegiate press.
More than one in ten (12%) local news outlets do not have their own website; when outlets are accounted for that only offer a PDF of their recent content, that figure rises to 17%.
Most local media are on social media. Nearly eight in ten local news outlets have their own Facebook profile. Even outlets without their own website are on the social networking site—fully one in three (34%).
When it comes to mobile, responsive design is more common (84% of local news sites) than individual apps (27% of local news outlets). Fully 74% of local TV stations offer their own app.
Overall, a slight majority of local news outlets (57%) offer an online pathway to subscription, donation or membership. This varies wildly depending on the sector, with broadcasters highly unlikely to do so, and daily newspapers highly likely.
Local news websites are generally split when it comes to their commenting architecture—a small majority (56% of outlets) offer comment sections on their stories. (On local TV station websites, the share is just 29%).
Just under half (47%) of local news outlets offer video on their site. Of those that do, 44% host their videos on YouTube.
Links to live-streams of video or audio (16%) and podcasts (11%) are fairly uncommon among local news websites, though unsurprisingly, appear more frequently on sites operated by broadcasters.
On average, daily newspaper and local TV station websites are the slowest to load, at more than 20 seconds each, by one measure. Digital native publishers, and community weeklies and magazines tend to load faster, at a rate of between 13-15 seconds each.
Only about a quarter (23%) of local news websites redirect to a secure version. Overall, about four in ten (39%) local news outlets offer or promote a newsletter product on their website. Daily newspapers (65%) and digital native publishers (57%) lead the way here.
This study was conducted using several different methods between Fall 2017 and Spring 2018. A random sample of local news publishers was drawn from a database of outlets prepared by the News Measures Research Project, based off of the Cision Media Database.2 A range of digital attributes were coded manually by a team of researchers. An additional set of attributes were collected programmatically by Tow Center staff. More details on the methodology can be found below.
This report looks at the digital attributes of local news publishers in the United States. The study was designed in August 2017, with data collection of varying methods taking place between September 2017 and March 2018.
The sample of local news outlets used in this project was drawn randomly from a large database of local publishers created by the News Measures Research Project based in turn on data from the Cision Media Database. The Cision database, while imperfect, is described by the NMRP authors as “the best available commercial database for identifying media outlets and media workers in the US3” While the Cision database is updated daily, the list of outlets for this project was extracted in 2016.
The research team further cleaned the NMRP data to eliminate a small number of duplicates and irregularities. This resulted in a dataset of 11,804 local news publishers. Each outlet was assigned a random digit using a random number generator, after which a 20% sample was drawn. While the dataset generally reflects the broader local media landscape, it is limited in some respects. Certain media sectors are likely underrepresented in total population, particularly, digital-native publications and collegiate press.
This sample resulted in a total of 2,361 local news outlets. During the process of analyzing those outlets, a number of publishers were deemed to be closed, dormant or not related to local news. (For purposes of this study, an outlet was considered “local” if it covered affairs in a single neighborhood, municipality, metropolitan area, and in some cases even state affairs, though few outlets fell into this latter category; publishers such as The Bitter Southerner were removed given their broad regional coverage.) These were eliminated from the dataset, resulting in a more refined sample of 2,072 outlets.
Of the 2,072 local news outlets studied, a total of 1,814 were found to have a website (following which, six outlets were eliminated due to hard paywalls that prevented any in-depth analysis). The final list of 1,808 sites were studied and evaluated for each of the attributes in the coding protocol.
A score of .67 is generally considered acceptable using this measure.
Two researchers analyzed the sample of outlets during the months of September 2017 through March 2018.
A separate analysis was conducted using the 1,808 local news outlets with valid websites in the sample, to glean more information about the sites’ digital security, ad tech, social media profiles, and load time. This analysis resulted in valid data for 1,102 of those sites, or 61%.
While there are many possible ways to measure how local newsrooms are applying a mobile content strategy, this study offers two vantage points: mobile apps (in iOS) and responsive website design for mobile browsers.
Relatively few local news outlets offer their own mobile app, but the numbers vary widely from media sector to media sector. Overall, about a quarter (27%) of local news outlets offer an app in the Apple operating system (the Android platform was not evaluated for this project).
Apps are more common for broadcast outlets and in daily newspapers, but less so for smaller digital operations and community publications. Fully 74% of local TV stations, many of them supported by an owner with resources to scale, have their own app. In addition, some stations are offering niche products, such as weather apps.8 Nearly half of radio stations (46%) have a mobile app, and slightly more than half of daily newspapers (55%) do as well.
To gauge whether local publishers are adopting responsive design for mobile phones, researchers for this study evaluated a smaller, random subset of the larger sample—200 websites. Of this sample, the vast majority (84%) offered a mobile responsive version of their website.
With few exceptions, local news publishers are still struggling to build a sustainable online business model. It is now widely accepted that revenue from digital advertising will never approach the kind of money generated in the salad days of print. That acceptance has moved many newspaper publishers to pursue digital subscription models that place some of their content behind paywalls. Meanwhile, news outlets of all types, including broadcast television and radio, do what they can to generate some ad revenue online, though sometimes through means that degrade the user experience.
While there are many potential revenue streams for news publishers, and many variants on the common ones, three basic indicators offer a baseline sense of what local news outlets are trying to do: subscription or membership pathways; paywalls; and advertising.
This analysis finds that, overall, a slight majority of local news outlets (57%) offer an online pathway to subscription, donation or membership. This differs substantially depending on the type of outlet, however.
Print outlets (daily, weekly and magazine publishers) are most likely to offer a pathway to pay. Broadcast outlets (radio and TV) and collegiate media are least likely to offer one.
When it comes to print, daily publications and those that publish less frequently differ as well. Fully 94% of daily newspapers studied here offer an option to subscribe online. Yet little more than two-thirds of community weeklies (69%) and community magazines (68%) offer such an option on their websites.
Why the disparity among print outlets? There may be a couple of reasons. First, daily papers may simply have more advanced digital operations than other local print outlets, including pathways to pay. Second, daily papers may rely on subscription revenue more than these other types of publishers do, and thus prioritize it online. Circulation revenue is growing for the industry overall, but the data suggest that as advertising continues to wither as a primary source of local journalism revenue, these weekly and monthly publications will have more ground to make up in the race to create direct financial relationships with subscribers.
This is a problem that will seriously affect digital-native community publishers, who according to other research have been chiefly driven by advertising.11 This study funds that just one-third (34%) of these types of publishers offer an opportunity for a reader to contribute by donation, subscription or membership.
Commercial radio as well as local and network and television are historically almost entirely dependent on over-the-air advertising for their revenue (a recent exception for local TV is the rise of retransmission fees as a minor but growing source of cash).12 Thus it is no surprise that a minority of broadcasters offer online subscription, membership or donation options (21% of radio stations and 19% of TV stations). It is likely that almost all of those that do offer such options are public broadcasters, who rely on memberships and other types of donations for ongoing support.
This study does not duplicate that work, but rather takes a closer look at community weeklies—a large if sometimes overlooked segment of the newspaper world that has historically been less reliant than dailies on circulation revenue. About one in three (28%) of these types of papers gate at least some of their content.
In most cases, community weekly paywalls operate with a metered approach. A very small portion post a hard paywall, which means that all or nearly all content is accessible only to subscribers.
Among other types of local publishers, such as digital-native outlets and broadcasters, paywalls are quite rare.
The vast majority of local news publishers serve digital advertising of one kind or another, though with the exception of some digital native publishers, this revenue accounts for a small share of the bottom line.
This study set out not to evaluate the entire range of digital advertising served by local publishers, but a specific subset of that: the viral ad tech that has found itself the subject of criticism lately. These content recommendation services—particularly Taboola and Outbrain—have put some publishers in a bind: Many journalists consider the material promoted by these services to be low-quality clickbait. Yet, for the last few years at least, publishers have generated a solid base of revenue in exchange for allowing content recommendation service widgets to appear on their websites.
To get a sense of how common it is for local publishers to use these services, once again we turned to a smaller random sub-sample of 200 local news websites. Of those sites, we found that only a small portion (17%) have the Outbrain or Taboola content widget on their home page. Contrast that to the presence of Google/Doubleclick ad tech on local news sites—a service that appears in 58% of local news websites.
There are many opportunities and platforms today through which local news publishers can foster meaningful engagement with their communities. Some are in person, such as events, meetups and community listening sessions. Others are primarily digital and include a variety of touchpoints such as texting, Facebook groups, Slack channels and message boards. To arrive at a basic measure of how local news outlets are doing when it comes to online engagement with their audiences, this study measured two values: the presence or lack of comment sections under news stories, and the presence or absence of social platforms attached to the publisher’s brand.
This analysis found that local news websites were generally split when it came to their commenting architecture—a small majority (56% of outlets) offer comment sections on their stories. The rest do not.
Across media sectors, the practice seems to vary dramatically. Digital-native publishers (80%) and collegiate press (87%) are most likely to offer comment sections under their stories, with daily newspapers not far behind, at 76%. However, just one in three local TV stations (29%) studied here offer comment sections at the end of their stories.
The vast majority of local news outlets (78\%) have a presence on Facebook.
Research has shown that social media is a pathway to community news for many.16 But social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram offer community members an opportunity to interact with stories and journalists through “likes,” emojis, comments, shares and other metrics.
This study offers a limited but revealing look at how local news outlets around the US are utilizing social media, by accounting for whether a local outlet operates a Facebook or Twitter profile.
Looking across all local media, a solid majority are on Facebook (78%), while just over half (54%) are on Twitter.
What’s more, even local news outlets without their own websites are sometimes found on Facebook, perhaps suggesting a leapfrog effect; after all, it is easier to create a social media profile than to wrangle a WordPress template. Fully 34% of those “offline” publishers have an active Facebook page.
Further complicating matters, while there is evidence that the public is turning in droves to streaming services for television consumption, news is not an overwhelming part of that mix.20 Indeed, as of 2013, just 36% of US adults reported watching online news video, a number that had only risen 10 points from 2007 levels, while other forms of video consumption have risen much more dramatically.21 As of 2016, people who prefer to watch their news (as opposed to reading or listening to it) overwhelmingly chose television over the internet as their viewing platform of choice.22 The overhyped and quickly lamented “pivot to video,” it seems, sent publishers—especially national digital ones—chasing at great cost an audience that never materialized.
Still, many local news outlets and their owners have decided that video should be a part of their digital offerings, even if audience interest is tepid and substantial revenue opportunities have yet to appear. This analysis found that across all local media sectors (including print, broadcast and digital-native publishers), nearly half (47%) offered video on their websites.
YouTube plays an outsize role when it comes to hosting digital news video for local news outlets. The websites with video offerings were split in terms of how those videos were hosted: Just over half the sites (51%) self-hosted news videos. The majority of the rest embedded video through a third-party hosting service, almost exclusively YouTube (44%).
The inclusion of digital video was evident across a wide range of media sectors, but especially in broadcast. Perhaps unsurprisingly, nearly every local television station studied (96%) offered some form of video on their website. Yet video made an appearance on a solid majority of daily newspaper websites as well (66%). Other print sectors including community newspapers and magazines were less interested in video, as were digital-native community publishers.
Most of the video found on local news websites was pre-recorded, in many cases repurposed from television broadcasts. But a small portion of websites (16%) also featured live streams of video or audio content. Unlike pre-recorded video, in these cases radio had the edge with fully 81% of news radio websites offering a live stream of their audio broadcasts. A little more than half (55%) of local TV news websites offered a live stream, often of the morning or evening newscast as it occurred. In other forms of media, live streams were nearly absent: among print, digital and collegiate press sectors, 5% or less featured a live stream of any kind.
Podcasting has been around for decades, but in the last few years has enjoyed a renaissance in the journalism world as organizations such as NPR and startups such as Gimlet Media have produced breakthrough hits that embrace the medium and offer compelling, fact-based storytelling. To judge the extent to which local news publishers have jumped on board the podcasting bandwagon, this study examined their websites for evidence of any kind of podcast promotion or link.
This analysis suggests that podcasting has not achieved critical mass in the local news world, with just one in ten (11%) of local news outlets promoting or linking to a podcast on their website. Leading the way are radio broadcasters, which include a mix of commercial radio stations and public radio stations. Half of these (50%) offer podcasts. Other local media sectors lag behind. One-fifth of digital-native community publishers and college or university newspapers offer podcasts. Among print media, just 11% of daily papers, 2% of community weeklies and 4% of magazines offer podcasts. Among TV stations, it was just 12%.
It is certainly possible and perhaps even likely that some outlets offer podcasts but simply do not promote them on their website, for one reason or another. For that reason, it’s wiser to consider the data here as reflective of a minimum rather than maximum share of publishers in the podcasting space.
Brady’s litany of local new sins includes slow website load times, pop-up ads, autoplay video and slideshows, with their pagination designed to drive users to click on more pages.
Here we considered first whether local news publishers have any web presence at all. Beyond that, load time is analyzed, as well as two other offerings related to user experience: alternative news delivery platforms and digital security.
In order for an online news consumer to have a positive user experience there must be a user experience to begin with. In light of that, it is striking to note that more than one in ten (12%) local news outlets do not have a website at all.
Furthermore, some local outlets are only online in the strictest technical sense. Of the 1,814 outlets with a website, 93 offered content only in the form of a static e-reader such as a PDF (5% of all outlets with a website). In total, fully 17% of all local news outlets limit their digital offerings to a PDF version of their news, or have no discernable online presence at all.
A new analysis of load times on local news websites suggests that things have not necessarily improved when it comes to speed, and that there are disparities between local media sectors, with digital-native community publishers leading the way in optimal load times. On average, local news websites are taking about 17 seconds to fully load, according to research conducted using Google’s Lighthouse tools. The slowest sites tend to be those operated by local TV stations (26 seconds on average) and daily newspapers (22 seconds). Both types of publishers offer large volumes of content and present lots of advertising on their pages. Digital-native publisher websites load in 13 seconds on average, and community magazines (14 seconds) and community weeklies (15 seconds) are not far behind.
While this is one of many different possible measures of website performance and should not be considered the only verdict, it suggests that local news publishers continue to struggle with websites that are weighed down with digital baggage, and that this harms the audience experience of those websites.
Local news outlets have a long way to go when it comes to basic digital security for their users: Less than a quarter (23%) of local news websites offer a redirect to an https encrypted version. This low rate is consistent across multiple local media sectors, though is especially low among local radio websites, just 14% of which offer https.
Another way for local publishers to enhance their users’ experience is to consider and utilize other opportunities outside the website to reach them with news and information. E-mail newsletters have experienced something of a renaissance in recent years, as publishers have rediscovered the inbox as a critical touchpoint with their audiences.
Have local news outlets adopted newsletter products as well? To get a sense of this, we scoured the websites of local news outlets to identify any links or sign-up sections or advertisements for newsletters. While not a perfect metric, it nevertheless offers a general sense of how widespread these products are in the world of local news.
Overall, about four in ten (39%) of local news outlets offer or promote a newsletter product on their website. Of all the media sectors studied, there are only two for whom a majority of publishers are offering newsletters: daily newspapers (65%) and digital-native publishers (57%). About half of community magazines (49%) offer newsletters.
Among the least likely to promote newsletters, besides college papers (25%) which are typically under-resourced for these kinds of alternative products, were community weeklies. Just under one-third (32%) of these papers offer email newsletters to their audiences.
At the same time, there is also little variance in many of these trends across geographic regions in the US. In particular, video hosting and livestreaming, newsletter and podcast promotion, and maintenance of a mobile app are all areas where little to no variation across geographic regions surfaced in our study.
When it comes to other features, some modest differences stand out. For instance, local news outlets in the Midwest (63%) are somewhat more likely than those in the Northeast (51%) to offer online pathways to subscription, membership or donation. Conversely, local news outlets in the Midwest (50%) are about 10 points less likely than those in other regions of the country to offer comment sections in their online stories.
It’s possible that even these differences might be attributable to disparities in the composition of media types from region to region. But the fact that these broad regional differences are not all that dramatic should not foreclose the notion that other kinds of differences exist between communities. For instance, rural and urban communities, and poor and rich ones may differ when it comes to the digital qualities of the local news they receive. Differences might reveal themselves between states, as well. Future research using this very data set might reveal such differences.
The rich and varied fabric of American society reminds us that community information needs differ from one neighborhood to the next. And yet the consolidation of local media ownership leads to more one-size-fits-all tech and product solutions. In a media system where both independent and corporately owned local media coexist, the challenge is two-fold, and consists of finding ways to support the innovations and experiments in independent local news publishing, while also encouraging nimbleness in large firms that include local outlets in their holdings.
Nikki Usher, “Making News at the New York Times,” University of Michigan Press, 2014.
Philip Napoli, Ian Dunham, and Jessica Mahone, “Assessing News Media Infrastructure: A State-Level Analysis,” News Measures Research Project, 2017, https://dewitt.sanford.duke.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Assessing-News-Media-Infrastructure_Report.
Kristine Lu, “Growth in Mobile News Use Drive by Older Adults,” Pew Research Center, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/12/growth-in-mobile-news-use-driven-by-older-adults/.
Sahil Patel, “Tegna is Bringing Snapchat Content to its Local News Broadcasts,” Digiday, 2018, https://digiday.com/media/tegna-bringing-snapchat-content-local-news-broadcasts/.
Debora Wenger and Bob Papper, “Local TV News and the New Media Landscape,” Knight Foundation, 2018, https://www.knightfoundation.org/reports/local-tv-news-and-the-new-media-landscape.
Priya Ganapati, “Lessons from Five Years in Mobile News Apps: #1 Don’t Have a News App.,” Medium, 2015, https://medium.com/swlh/lessons-from-five-years-in-mobile-news-apps-1-don-t-have-a-news-app-c46939195389.
Pete LePage, “Responsive Web Design Basics,” Google, https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/design-and-ux/responsive/.
Michele McLellan, “A 2016 Snapshot of the Local News Startup Business,” Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, 2016, http://towknight.org/2016/05/micheles_list_2016_survey_results/.
“BIA/Kelsey Reports Local Television Station Revenue Reached $28.4 B in 2016; Retransmission Fees, Over-the-Air and Digital Revenue Contribute to a Strong Year,” 2017, http://www.biakelsey.com/biakelsey-reports-local-television-station-revenue-reached-28-4-b-2016-retransmission-fees-air-digital-revenues-contribute-strong-year/.
Alex T. Williams, “Paying for Digital News: The Rapid Adoption and Current Landscape of Digital Subscriptions at U.S. Newspapers,” American Press Institute, 2016, https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/digital-subscriptions/single-page/#digital-subscriptions-today.
Kristen Ballard, “Native Advertising on the Local Scale,” News Media Alliance, 2016, https://www.newsmediaalliance.org/native-advertising-local/.
Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud, Emily Van Duyn, Alexis Alizor, and Cameron Lang, “Comment Section Survey across 20 News Sites,” Center for Media Engagement, 2017, https://mediaengagement.org/research/comment-section-survey-across-20-news-sites/.
Michael Barthel, Elisa Shearer, Jeffrey Gottfried, and Amy Mitchell, “The Evolving Role of News on Twitter and Facebook,” Pew Research Center, 2015, http://www.journalism.org/2015/07/14/the-evolving-role-of-news-on-twitter-and-facebook/.
Jeffrey Gottfried and Elisa Shearer, “Americans’ online news use is closing in on TV news use,” Pew Research Center, 2017, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/07/americans-online-news-use-vs-tv-news-use/.
Katerina Eva Matsa, “Local TV News Fact Sheet,” Pew Research Center, 2017, http://www.journalism.org/fact-sheet/local-tv-news/.
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Matthew Hindman, “Stickier News: What Newspapers Don’t Know about Web Traffic has Hurt Them Badly—But There is a Better Way,” Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, 2015, https://shorensteincenter.org/stickier-news-matthew-hindman/.
Barrett Golding, “Need for Speed 1: Newspaper Load Times Give ‘Slow News Day’ New Meaning,” Reynolds Journalism Institute, 2015, https://www.rjionline.org/stories/need-for-speed-1-newspaper-load-times-give-slow-news-day-new-meaning.
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Note: Of the 1814 outlets with a website, 93 had content limited to simply a PDF (5% of all outlets with a website). That leaves 1721 outlets with a website consisting of more than a PDF of the week’s news content, or 83% of all local news outlets. Of the outlets that do not have a website, some nevertheless have an active social media presence. Of the 258 outlets with no website, 87 had an active Facebook page (posting content in the previous month). That amounts to 34% of all offline local news outlets.
Note: Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
Note: based on Cision classification; some categories collapsed for analysis purposes.
Note: ‘Total outlets’ number for each region includes outlets that were shelved from the main portion of the study due to impenetrable paywalls. Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
A total of 1,102 websites from the broader sample of 1,808 were analyzed programmatically for a number of additional indicators.
Note: within the 847 outlets with no https redirect, one was a blank entry that was recoded as ‘no.’ Facebook and Twitter data combine both programmatically collected information as well as information appearing in the original Cision dataset. Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
Note: Facebook and Twitter data combine both programmatically collected information as well as information appearing in the original Cision dataset. Note: Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
Note: Facebook and Twitter data combine both programmatically collected information as well as information appearing in the original Cision dataset. Numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding.
The following is a summary of attributes with definitions and rules, which were used to classify a range of digital indicators for local news outlets. For all attributes, researchers studied a minimum of three stories per outlet, and evaluated ‘about,’ ‘subscribe,’ and ‘contact’ sections. In addition, keyword searches for the following attributes were applied to websites.
Comment section in stories: Y/N. Select ‘Y’ if stories offer the option to comment below text section.
Ad tech: List the content recommendation services and advertising service brands occupying space on the home page (i.e., Google, Taboola, Outbrain). Note where custom local advertising appears as well.
Digital video hosting platform: Leave blank if no video; list the platform if video is present (i.e., YouTube, Vimeo). If hosting company is not identified, mark as ‘native’/NA.
Newsletters offered: Y/N. Scan and search the home page to identify whether or not the publisher promotes or links to its email newsletter(s). May also appear in ‘subscribe’ or ‘contact’ section of website. Select ‘Y’ if publisher offers email alerts or updates on daily or weekly news items.
Video/Audio live feed: Y/N. Scan the home page to identify if the publisher promotes or links to a live video or audio feed.
Donation/subscribe link: Y/N. Scan the home page and other relevant pages (‘subscribe,’ ‘give,’ ‘join,’ and so on) to identify if the publisher promotes or links to an opportunity to subscribe or donate to the outlet.
Mobile app: Y/N. Scan the home page (as well as other relevant pages, such as ‘about’ or ‘subscribe’) to identify if the publisher promotes or links to its own app. In addition, search Apple App Store for the name of each individual publisher.
Mobile-responsive home page: Y/N. Use a smartphone to load home page and record observation. A responsive design for mobile renders in such a way that text and images automatically fit to the mobile screen. A non-responsive website will render in such a way that text and images must be manually expanded or dragged to view.
Paywall: Y/N. Site is considered to have at least a ‘soft’ paywall if it is indicated via home page message, or else, when researcher selects an article and the article is unavailable (or if the website warns that a limited number of articles may be accessed before reaching limit—known as metered pay wall). Visit at least three articles to determine whether soft meter is in effect. In addition, review ‘subscribe’ section to observe whether publisher describes expanded content benefits available with digital subscription.
Jesse Holcomb teaches journalism, digital media and communication at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI. He is widely quoted in national and international media, including the New York Times, NPR and BBC, and speaks regularly about his research to audiences in the U.S. and abroad.