For newspaper companies to continue to reach, and retain, the ever-escalating online audience -- both advertisers and consumers -- it is imperative to differentiate online offerings from the core print product and to benchmark constantly against the market and the competition.

This is especially true for newspaper companies in today's economic climate where it has become crucial to reduce costs while identifying additional revenue streams and growing profits through the development of innovative, new products.

In a recently released study by Borrell Associates, total 2008 online advertising has been forecasted to reach $13.1 billion by the end of the year, an increase of approximately 51% from a year ago. Additionally, Borrell estimates that about $3.7 billion (or 28% of total online advertising spending) will be allocated to newspaper websites, more than three times the $1.2 billion projected for television station sites.

However, according to Borrell, a number of television websites are outperforming their market's major newspaper sites in terms of traffic, as defined by the number of unique visitors to a site. As the study makes clear, while this upsurge in traffic may not necessarily translate into a revenue advantage, it nonetheless suggests that some television stations are successfully managing their websites as standalone enterprises differentiated from their broadcast offerings.

These successful sites offer a range of special features and web tools, such as robust video feeds, advanced interactivity, and prompt posting of breaking news -- most notably weather. Typically, and unlike newspapers, television stations have certified meteorologists on staff and, therefore, feel they should own weather when it is breaking news. For example, WMUR and its parent company, Hearst-ArgyleTelevision, Inc., in Manchester, N.H., have prominently positioned weather as the first area on their website's navigation bar (above such areas as local news, politics, entertainment, and sports). A simple click brings the online visitor to a page featuring live radar, severe storm and hurricane warnings, slideshows and video-casts, sky cams, a weather Q & A blog, and an interactive radar screen that essentially allows the visitor to act as a virtual weatherperson.

In contrast, weather on the local newspaper website in the same market is tucked in at the bottom of the site's Welcome page. The actual weather site contains current and seven-day forecasts, and related news items on the weather and its effect on local businesses -- information available in a similar format in the printed paper -- as well as a live radar feed, but little else.

Moving beyond weather, other television stations are coming up with inventive ways to extend their reach and differentiate their user's web experience by offering new and unique online content, such as user-generated "Citizen Journalist" platforms and viewer-submitted videos on such key topics as local politics, entertainment, and sports coverage.

To compete locally online, therefore, it is essential for newspapers to experiment, test, and most importantly, benchmark their online offerings against the market and the competition. Metrics can be developed to benchmark, when possible, traffic, registration rates, and online ad revenue, among other measures. Such benchmarking needs to be done routinely and consistently.

Moreover, newspaper websites should provide a fundamentally different experience for users versus the printed newspaper. The goal is to motivate consumers to read the printed newspaper product and visit the newspaper's website.

Based on recent Kannon work on the online market, such crossover consumers will turn to their local newspaper's website for background and depth on local topics of interest and breaking news. They want newspapers to provide unique and practical local news and information they cannot find anywhere else. They want, for example, the most reliable, up-to-date local school and work closings, and event cancellation information.

Crossover consumers also want a website that is easy to scan to find what they are looking for. They quickly want to see what items have been added to the site or have been recently updated. They also want an effective key-word search box to find topics of interest easily and straightforwardly on the site.

When executed well, and appropriately, the use of online tools such as streaming video (offering some mixture of local, Associated Press, and original content), daily or even weekly podcasts, RSS feeds, reporter blogs (especially ones that allow consumer comments), and user-generated videos, photos, and other content will extend the information readers can obtain in a printed newspaper and enhance the user's experience of the newspaper's site.

To differentiate a newspaper's website from its print product, and possibly from its chief competitors in the market, newspaper companies might also offer content for mobile devices, such as cell phones, handheld PDAs, and portable media players. Newspapers might also investigate offering social networking capabilities on their site. This feature would allow users to create interactive online profiles or build relationships with other users. Newspaper sites could also offer a "Most Popular" function, a dynamically created utility that keeps track of, for example, the most viewed, most read, or most emailed articles. Such a function could serve as an invaluable measurement to maximize a website's ROI.

Certainly there is a need for a new strategic model for newspaper websites. To win locally online, newspaper websites must continue to evolve beyond their core printed products and provide immediate local news and information quicker, smarter, and more reliably than their competitors, and to enhance and transform the experience they give to their readers online.