Newspapers Missing Out On Opportunities For Video/Audio In Online Classifieds

While rich media (audio, video, animation) is flourishing on the Internet -- a result of the rise of broadband adoption by US households -- newspapers are lagging in implementing these features. This is the conclusion of a recent study by the University of Missouri's graduate school of journalism.

"The study states that while many newspapers have increased interactive and rich media features on their sites, none of the newspapers studied use audio clips; video clips are deployed by only 4.2 percent; audio/video clips are available on just 8.3 percent of sites, and an IM chat feature can be found on just 2.8 percent of newspaper classified sites. E-mail notification is another feature popular with online-only sites, yet missing from the majority of newspaper publishers."

This reality can only put newspapers' websites on the lower end of users' lists of sites they regularly visit for news consumption, and therefore short circuit attempts to produce ad dollars from online efforts.

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