Online newspaper

An online newspaper (or electronic news or electronic news publication) is the online version of a newspaper. They can be either stand-alone publications (publications with only one issue) or online versions of a periodical.

Going online created more opportunities for newspapers, like being able to show breaking news faster. Giving up the printing process also helped to decrease costs.  

 Early history 

The first newspaper to go online was The Columbus Dispatch on July 1, 1980.  By the late 1990s, hundreds of U.S. newspapers were publishing online versions, but did not have much interactivity. One example is Britain's Weekend City Press Review, which provided a weekly news summary online beginning in 1995.

Online-only newspapers

An online-only paper has no print-media connections, meaning that an online-only newspaper would not print anything. Even print media is turning to online-only publication. One example is that The Independent stopped print publications in 2016, becoming the first British national newspaper to move to an online-only format. Also, with online media becoming more popular, older publications like the U.S. News & World Report are abandoning print and going online-only.

In October 2020, 11 online-only news portals formed DIGIPUB News India foundation to encourage online-only press.

 Trends 
In 2015, 65% of people said that they liked print more, 4% less than in 2014. Also, 28% of people got their news digitally, as opposed to 20% of people using print newspapers. These trends show that more people are using online newspapers more than print newspapers The ad revenue (money made from advertisements) for digital forms of newspapers was nearly 25% in 2016, and it was 5% in 2006.

Hybrid newspapers
Hybrid newspapers focus mostly on online content but also make print forms.  The New York Times is an example of this: it has both a home delivery print subscription and a digital subscription. There are some newspapers which are mostly online, but also have limited hard copy publishing[11] An example is annarbor.com, which replaced the Ann Arbor News in the summer of 2009. It is generally an online newspaper, but publishes a hard copy twice a week.[12] Other trends show that this model is being used by many newspapers with the growth of online media.

The turn to hybrid publishing also matches with the popularity of social media platforms to display news, especially for people between 18 and 24.

Use
In 2013, the Reuters Institute started a survey on the popularity of different types of news, and collected information about online newspaper use that shows that people rarely used paid online newspaper subscriptions Newman, N., & Levy, D.A.L. (2013). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford. Half of the people surveyed said that they paid for a print newspaper in the past week, and only 5% of them paid for online news in the past week. The 5% could be because most people access news that is free. People with handheld devices, like tablets or phones, were also a lot more likely to subscribe to digital news content. Additionally, people who were between 25 and 34 were more willing to pay for digital news than older people.  The Pew Research Center also found similar results in a survey of U.S. Americans. They found that the Internet is a popular news source for people younger than 50.Dimock, M., Doherty, C., Nagina.net & Tyson, A. (2013). Report: Amid Criticism, Support for Media's 'Watchdog' Role Stands Out. Pew Research Center.

Popularity of online articles

Not all articles published online have the same amount of readers; there are reasons for their popularity. The number of times an article gets shared on social media is important for online-publishers and advertisers.Bandari, R., Azur, S., & Huberman, B. (2012).  Because of this, they are interested in the number of shares, and can even predict it before it gets published. With new methods, you can find out the features of an article. 

A team of Portuguese scientists got information from the website Mashable and analyzed it. They discovered that the average keywords and how popular the keywords were had the most effect on the amount of shares an article receives. Also, the number of links to other articles and the closeness to the most important current events is very important for an article to be popular. The day when the article was published is less important. Fernandes, K. , Vinagre, P. & Cortez, P. (2015).

Related pages
 Digital media
 Internet
 World Wide Web

References

Category:Online newspapers