The number of readers of FT.com among the respondents to the survey, which questioned ‘senior decision makers’ in 17 European countries, rose from 9.2 per cent in 2006 to 10.3 per cent.

• Online news as trustworthy as print for majority of readers, survey claims
• Poynter: Danish newspapers not ‘trustworthy, relevant, or necessary’
• Americans spending more time consuming news, research suggests
• Ninety-seven per cent of ‘business decision makers’ use B2Bs online
• Survey: Financial leaders turning to broadcast channels for news?

In a follow up to Tuesday’s announcement that the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) will provide user profiles alongside stats on page impressions and unique users, Guy Lipscombe, managing director of Survey Interactive – the firm behind the on-site surveys being used for the research – explained how the ‘enhanced ABCe certificates’ would work at yesterday’s Regional Media Research Forum (RMRF) event:

Lipscombe was joined by Sally O’Donnell, strategic marketing manager for Trinity Mirror Regionals (TMR), who let us in on some key findings from Survey Interactive’s audience research with the group, which involved on-site questionnaires completed by 53,313 interviewees across TM’s 110 regional and national websites:

• TM’s online portfolio in Feb 08 was reaching 3.8 million adults a month according to the surveys – a different figure from the 5.5 million unique users calculated for the sites at the same time
• More than a third of internet users from an area covered by a TM regional title accessed the paper’s website on a regular basis
• A third of TMR website users regularly use more than one TMR website
• The group’s regional sites had a higher proportion of ABC1 (the National Readership Survey classification for middle class) users
• TM regional sites were given an average rating by interviewees of 8/10
• The regional sites attracted a young audience, but not as young as expected, said O’Donnell: majority of users were in the 35-54 age bracket

According to O’Donnell, further research will be conducted soon, as the group’s digital audience continues to grow. Sales staff training on how best to use the figures collected by the research will also be implemented – with particular attention paid to the difference between stats for ‘adults’ and ‘unique users’ to the sites and how behaviour differs amongst print and online consumers.

• Associated Newspapers claim monthly reach of 22 million
• How did the national newspaper online sites report the August ABCes?
• RMRF: Regional Media Research Forum in new web launch
• Welt.de posts record traffic for February
• Paywall results in for Newsday as US newspapers see dip in traffic

As a result of an inadvertant information security error Aberdeen’s Press and Journal website exposed information about registered users online.

• Making money from registered (non-paying) users
• Short-skirted woman sues newspaper commenter
• Online media consumption up by seven per cent, as a result of financial strife
• ‘Like’ and ‘tweet’ buttons – what news sites need to know about dropped cookies
• How not to fall for a hoax like ‘IE6 users are dumb’

Readers and editors’ views on journalists participating in online discussions on local news websites are split, according to new research from the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME).

When questioned on the benefits of ‘journalists joining the conversation online and giving personal views’, 50% of the 500 readers surveyed said this would be ‘somewhat or very beneficial to good journalism online’.

In comparison only 27% of the 1,250 newsroom editors interviewed felt the same way.

Figures from the study suggest, however, that both groups support of local news sites opening up stories to user comments. Editors were more in favour than readers of users contributing under their real name.

The two groups also agreed when asked whether the same standards applied to online news written by journalists should be applied to citizen journalism content with 74% of the readers and 69% of the editors saying this would benefit online journalism.

The complete findings of the survey can be read on the APME website.

• Poynter to launch online groups network
• Allvoices.com offers $10,000 reward for citizen journalists
• Newspaper Society: Round-up of record web traffic for local media titles covering riots
• Scottish newspapers claw back advertising from council jobs site
• LA Times breaks web traffic record with 127m page views

Kristine Lowe is a freelance journalist who writes on the media industry for number of US, UK and Norwegian publications. Today Online Journalism Scandinavia looks again at news sites linking to blogs.

Dagbladet.no, the online operation of Norway’s second biggest tabloid, has become the latest Scandinavian news site to use Twingly to show blog links to articles on the site.

Dagladet.no has been experimenting with Twingly since October last year, but last week announced that Twingly would now become the standard across the site.

However, the online newspaper said that articles dealing with very sensitive issues – those concerning murder, suicide and death – would not not have the technology applied to them.

“Our experiences with Twingly so far are very positive. There are so many interesting things happening in the blogosphere, and we think it is important that our readers can converse in their own rooms and extend the debate about our articles there,” Mina Hauge Naerland, a journalist involved with the implementation, told Journalism.co.uk.

“It’s also very interesting for us to be able to follow those conversations, it helps us improve our journalism.”

Politiken.dk, the news site of one of Denmark’s leading newspapers, started using Twingly a month ago, and the online operations of two of Sweden’s most influential newspapers, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, have used Twingly for about a year.

• Online Journalism Scandinavia: VG.no adds blog trackbacks to articles with Twingly
• Late Night Marketing: How one newspaper lost 5,000 incoming links
• Online Journalism Scandinavia: Here come the Web 2.0 docusoaps
• Twingly: Testing social media’s love of traditional news
• Bild reaches out to blogosphere with Twingly

The Guardian is working on a project to monitor user interaction with their website more closely.

This ‘attention data’ will then be reflected in content and community areas of the site, Tom Turcan, general manager and head of digital media development at the Guardian, told Journalism.co.uk.

Turcan would not be drawn on specifics of the plan, but said the project would involve social media firm Pluck – whose SiteLife technology is to be introduced to the community areas of Guardian.co.uk later this year.

“The principle of tracking how people use things and then reflecting it back on the site is a way to build community,” he said.

Most recommended/most e-mailed lists are basic examples of how the analysis may be used, said Turcan, but emphasis will be placed on representing ‘crowd wisdom’ in a ‘bespoke’ form.

Turcan was speaking on a panel discussing news on social networks, during which he announced the following figures for Guardian.co.uk (they are all per month):

• 2 million podcasts downloaded
• 0.5 – 1 million videos viewed
• 2 million RSS clicks
• 50,000 blog posts

• Technology Review: How trustworthy is crowd wisdom?
• Birmingham student launches hyperlocal site for final year project
• Sky News claims 58 per cent traffic increase from last year
• UCLan project awarded £64,000 from Google to support ‘news entrepreneurs’
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – 10 tips for building community on social media

According to data released by Newspaper Association of America and compiled by Nielsen Online, the online readership of US newspapers grew about 6 per cent last year.

Online reach of newspapers grew to 38 per cent of all active online users, up from 36 percent in 2006.

Newspapers had an average of 60 million unique US visitors per month in 2007, up from 56.4 million the year before.

• ABCes: Independent.co.uk records biggest increase in daily browsers
• ‘Facebook Effect’ developing widgets boosts your site traffic
• Paywall results in for Newsday as US newspapers see dip in traffic
• Nielsen Online release: Web traffic to top 10 US newspapers grew 16 per cent last year
• LinkedIn growing by two new members every second

According to the site, Facebook apps will soon be easier to embed on external websites. But how can news organisations direct users from the social network to their sites?

• ‘We wanted to make ourselves more Facebookey’, says Guardian
• Twitter is most-used social network to login to news sites
• TheBusinessDesk expands with iPhone app for regional business news
• Wired.co.uk: Are mobile news apps anti the link economy?
• MediaWeek: YouTube connects news organisations with cit-j video

Don’t hide editorial between ads and spam – readers don’t have to read on, says Robert Niles.

• Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – Three rules for online linking
• #Tip of the day from Journalism.co.uk – building reader relationships
• Robert Niles: ‘Communities are key in building websites’ advertiser support’
• OJR: Apps v eBooks – are we missing paid content opportunity?
• OJR: Advice for new journalism students

ComScore has collated figures that suggest foreign visitors outnumber UK readers on several of the UK’s leading news websites.

According to the Guardian, the Daily Mail leads the way with the most overseas users with 69 per cent coming from outside these shores.

Just over half Telegraph.co.uk users (57 per cent) were from outside the UK, a similar figure to Guardian Unlimited (56 per cent) and Times Online (55 per cent).

• Malcolm Coles: How US traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites
• Media Guardian: 15m UK users visted newspaper, claims ComScore
• Guardian most popular newspaper website in UK, according to Nielsen Online
• First peek at traffic stats for Times’ new site
• Guardian reveals iPhone app figures with more than 400,000 downloads

Latest figures from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA)show the number of unique visitors to US newspaper sites rose more than 6 per cent to a monthly average of 60 million.

• ABCes: Independent.co.uk records biggest increase in daily browsers
• Nielsen Online release: Web traffic to top 10 US newspapers grew 16 per cent last year
• Yahoo: US papers grew online audience 6 per cent last year
• Malcolm Coles: How US traffic is vital for UK newspaper sites
• Shropshire Star posts 59% rise in page impressions