Google offers advice: newspapers need to "engage" online readers

Posted by Robert Eisenhart on March 10, 2010 at 4:33 PM

Aggregators such a Google are often accused of making life more than a little difficult for newspapers - yet the company has spoken out once again, offering advice for newspapers struggling against the ubiquity of online news:

In an article by Mercedes Bunz from The Guardian's Digital Content Blog, Google stated that the "key" to newspaper's survival online is "engagement". The statement, issued by Google's Hal Varian, places emphasis on the importance of offering readers interactive experiences but provided little information on specific steps publications should take to go about doing this.

A key point made by Varian concerned the industries failure to recognize the spike in readership that occurs during "leisure hours." This suggestion supports a recent analysis by DanZarrella which found that users are more likely to share articles during the weekend than the weekday.

While at work, readers typically devote only 70 seconds to reading online news. Google called on news organizations to pay more attention to pay more attention to statistics such as these and offer services designed to accommodate readers' habits. The statistics suggests that instead of looking for lengthy news articles, readers want quick and accessible updates on what is going on around them. Thus the idea of "charging for access" is ineffective: readers lack the time to fully read articles and the simplicity of finding "news" makes a paid subscription unnecessary. Google suggests a new approach that would require readers to pay for specialized content.

Sources: The Digital Content Blog