Boston.com rates a ‘D’ from 24/7 Wall St. blog

Douglas A. McIntyre of 24/7 Wall St., a financial news and opinion Weblog, has rated the Web sites of the top 25 newspapers in the United States, and he gave Boston.com, The Boston Globe’s site, a ‘D.’

The sites were given ratings of ‘A’ through ‘F’ based on the following: strength of content; ease and use of navigation; use of new technology and online tools, including comment sections, message boards, and multimedia; layout; presence of a strong set of advertisers; and size of audience based on May measurements by Compete.com, a Boston-based online research service, of unique visitors compared to May 2008.

The top-ranked newspaper sites included The New York Times, with an A; Newsday, based in Melville, N.Y., with an A-; and the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times with an A-.

The only newspapers with sites ranked lower than the Globe were The Dallas Morning News, with a D-; The Philadelphia Inquirer with a D-; and The Star Ledger of Newark, N.J., with an F.

Based on McIntyre’s methodology, Boston.com’s low rating comes mainly from its poor design. McIntyre thinks that the site could be improved if it borrowed “some of the basic elements” of the site of its parent company’s flagship, the New York Times.

According to McIntyre’s posting, he reviewed the sites of the top 25 newspapers in America based on their circulation numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today were not ranked on McIntyre’s list because they are national properties with budgets not comparable to the other ranked papers, with the possible exception of the New York Times.

Boston.com had more than 1 million more unique visitors in May than in May 2008.

McIntyre called the organization of its front page “sloppy” and said the front page columns are poorly designed.

The review said the editors “do almost nothing with the tools they have to create reader priorities.” Although McIntyre said the editors offer widgets to get stories onto other sites, he said it is for a limited audience.

“Boston.com is a mishmash of content, much of it very good, but its poor design alienates and confuses the reader from his first visit to the home page,” the rating said.

McIntyre credited Boston.com for carrying a lot of premium advertising.

Globe involved in creating uniform standards for e-readers

A working group that includes The Boston Globe’s John Forcucci and Joel Swanson is expected to offer a proposal for an e-reader consortium for newspaper publishers and other content providers by the end of June, according to Editor & Publisher.

The consortium would help establish standards for e-reader advertising and the presentation of content, helping provide a uniform medium that would bring in reliable revenue, which the Internet has struggled to do. With revenue coming from built-in advertising and paid subscriptions, publishers could rely on the same system that powered the newspaper model.

Members of the Digital Publishing Alliance, an initiative from the University of Missouri’s Reynolds Journalism Institute, have been working on the proposal as a way to make e-readers a viable content platform.

“We have to recognize that (e-readers) are a fourth platform,” said Roger Fidler, the institute’s program director for digital publishing, according to Editor & Publisher. “It’s distinct from mobile and the Web and print.”

The Digital Publishing Alliance has 32 members, including the Globe, The New York Times, and the Newspaper Association of America. Forcucci, information technology director for business solutions at the Globe, and Swanson, a Globe senior software analyst, are joining Fidler, the Los Angeles Times’ Sean Reily and Boston lawyer Andrew Updegrove in developing the consortium.

The proposal idea came from a Digital Publishing Alliance e-reader symposium at the institute in May.

Adults viewing online classifieds more than doubles in 4 years

Almost half of all adults using the Internet have accessed online classified advertisements, more than double the number who did so in 2005, according to a May report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Four years ago, 22 percent of Internet users said they accessed online ads, but that number jumped to 49 percent in the new Pew poll, with the biggest increase among 25- to 34-year-olds. On a typical day, 16 percent in that age range looked at online classifieds, and 62 percent said they’ve accessed online classifieds at least once, according to Adweek.

Survey results showed 11 percent of 18- to -24-year-olds and 10 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds accessing online ads each day, with 57 percent and 49 percent, respectively, having looked at online classifieds at some point.

Online classified use was less frequent for Internet users from ages 45 to 54, at 7 percent on a typical day and at 48 percent having ever accessed online classifieds; ages 55 to 64, at 4 percent and 35 percent, respectively; and ages 65 and older, at 3 percent and 26 percent.

API recommends newspapers charge for online news content

The American Press Institute has recommended to newspaper industry leaders that they focus on harnessing the power of paid online news content.

API said research showed that “newspapers can make the leap from an advertising-centered to an audience-centered enterprise,” according to a Poynter article on an API white paper compiled for a meeting of newspaper executives May 28 in Chicago.

Suggestions included all types of paid content – subscriptions, micropayments or combinations – rather than a model based on advertising, especially for content that is expensive to produce.

In its report, API recommends establishing the value of content by charging for it; enforcing copyrights to protect fair use of content; charging users more for content they aggregate and redistribute from newspaper Web sites; investing in content-based systems and technology; and moving the focus away from advertisers and back to users and consumers, according to the Poynter article.

The API report noted that news sites have a group of “core loyalists” who visit news sites 18 days each month on average. Those users make up 85 percent of page views, whereas unique users – who often view the site once in a while, for a specific purpose – make up a mere 1 percent of page views. The API report says the core loyalists will pay for content, while sites could afford to lose the other users.

Charging for content could bolster print sales, too, according to a University of Southern California Annenberg survey mentioned by API. Free online content was the reason given by 22 percent of readers who dropped their print subscriptions, according to the survey.

The recommendations also included advice for dealing with Google and Kindle, which have both cut into newspaper revenue.

API recommended putting pressure on Google, which is responsible for 25 to 35 percent of traffic to news sites while keeping the revenue from the search results that point users to those sites, according to the report.

API criticized Kindle, Amazon’s electronic reader, as a model. Amazon keeps 70 percent of revenue generated in the partnership, and Kindle has failed to attract younger users; more than half of Kindle sales are to readers over 50, which reflects current print readers rather than pulling people from online viewing.

API staff wrote the report after a group of 50 publishers met several times, in sessions dating to November.

The items above were written, at least in part, from published reports by Jen Slothower and Jennifer Skala, graduate students at the Northeastern University School of Journalism and news staff coordinators for the Bulletin.