What's in the news : a comparative study of the differences between selected online and print newspapers in New Zealand

Abstract

This is a comparative study of selection of New Zealand print newspapers and their free to access online counterparts. The study addresses the growth of online formats as a new medium for publishing news content. It is also an investigation into the relationship between the print sources and their online counterparts. Part of the research investigates how much content crossover occurs between sources as well assessing how much content is unique to the different formats. Content analysis techniques were used to make the comparisons between the New Zealand websites. The result of the analysis showed that the New Zealand news websites in this study contained significantly less content than the morning print editions of the same newspapers. Sampling the online news sites once again in the afternoon further proved that there are significant differences between the print content and the online content across the different papers. A large amount of content is reported in either source but not found in both publications. There is quite a lot of variation between different news publications as well. Currently, due to the fact that the online sources do not have as much content as the print, the print editions are still potentially a better source to access a full range of new content. Newspapers and their news websites operate and exist in a complementary relationship. Some New Zealand newspapers have developed highly sophisticated websites that enhance and complement their print products whereas some other New Zealand newspapers have not developed their websites to the same extent. This will probably change significantly in the future.