Blogging catching on at biz sections

Three-fourths of the nation’s largest newspapers now offer blogs on business-related topics, according to a study released Tuesday by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University.

These popular online Web journals written by reporters get breaking news to readers more quickly, according to 60 percent of the business bloggers who responded to the study.

However, more than half of respondents also said this also takes away from their regular reporting time.

“Newspapers, reporters and businesses are grappling with the pros and cons of blogging,” said Andrew Leckey, director of the Reynolds Center, which funded the study. “Our practical research was designed to see how widespread blogging on business topics actually is, what’s propelling it and how it affects the overall news process.”

The two-part study consisted of a content analysis of 100 randomly selected newspapers and a survey that received 44 responses from active business bloggers. Their blogs represent topics ranging from individual industries to investments and corporate governance.

Research was conducted by Stephen Doig, the Knight Chair at the Arizona State University Cronkite School of Journalism, working in conjunction with the Reynolds Center staff.

Other content findings:

• Business blogs haven’t caught on at smaller papers. While 38 of the largest 50 newspapers have a business-related blog and 24 of them have two or more, fewer than one in 10 papers overall has one.
• Some business bloggers post frequently, particularly at larger papers, but the median number of postings overall is just three per week.
• The median number of reader comments to business blogs over a two-week period was nine, but many received no responses.

Read more here. The content analysis and survey results can be found here.