How Metro Manila Newspapers Use Web Technology

Metro Manila newspapers 1
Running Head: HOW METRO MANILA NEWSPAPERS USE WEB TECHNOLOGY
How Metro Manila Newspapers Use Web Technology
Sabbatical Paper URCO U54 S U 3 08
Gerardo Mariano
Department of Communication
De La Salle University
April 2010
Revised August 2010

Abstract. This paper asks to what extent Metro Manila newspapers have
undergone a transformation from pulp to digital. Employing a comparative
content analysis of their print and Internet editions, it presents data that news Web
sites contained only a fraction of printed stories and photos, and used interactive
features very sparingly. News publishers have a long way to go in understanding
and exploiting the technology that is threatening the newspaper industry but could
otherwise enhance journalism.
The newspaper as an industry that relies on printing ink on paper is in a crisis: falling circulation
figures, dwindling advertising revenues, competition from the electronic media and, recently, a
global recession (Campbell, 2004; Mindich, 2005; Bivings, 2008; Outing, 2008; PEJ, 2008). Yet
the very technology that appears to be a threat is the most promising opportunity area for
journalism (Meyer, 2008; Murdoch, 2008). The Internet offers journalists advantages never
before experienced by their print-only forbears. They now have access to the technology that can
help enhance story telling, allow for depth, real-time delivery of information over vast distances,
and, of course, interactivity (Seib, 2001).
Rogers described interactivity was a “most essential capacity” of electronic media (in Li,
1986). Interactivity is generally accepted as the ability of a medium to let the user “to exert
influence on the content and/or form of the mediated communication” (McMillan, 2002).
Today interactivity and the Internet are almost synonymous. While the Internet,
particularly the World Wide Web, boasts of other features like nonlinearity, unlimited space,
immediacy, depth and multimedia capability, these topics usually fall under interactivity.
A number of studies describe different levels of interactivity in online news which can be
grouped as minimal, enhanced and customized interactivity.
Minimal interactivity is transmissional or allocutional (Jensen, 1998, as cited in
McMillan, 2002), navigational (Deuze, 2001), the content element (Lin and Jeffres, 2001) and
shovelware (Foust, 2005; Dimitrova and Neznanski, 2006). The medium is one-way and content
is usually an HTML version of the printed edition (“shovelware”). Hyperlinks are present, but
only to lead the user to other material within the same site.
Enhanced interactivity. Daft and Lengel (1986) introduced the concept of media (or
information) richness, defined as “the ability of information to change understanding within a
time interval”:
Communication transactions that can overcome different frames of reference or

clarify ambiguous issues to change understanding in a timely manner are
considered rich. Communications that require a long time to enable understanding
or that cannot overcome different perspectives are lower in richness. In a sense,
richness pertains to the learning capacity of a communication.
They ranked face-to-face communication as information-richest, and in descending order:
telephone, personal documents, impersonal written documents, and numeric documents. They
suggested that communicators should use the richest possible medium in transmitting a message.
In this sense, the Web, while not entire as rich as literal face-to-face interaction, is richer than
standalone media, when the different modalities converge.
Pavlik (2001) noted that these convergent modalities enable the journalist to tell a story in
a uniquely suitable manner, “no longer constrained by the limited modalities available in
previous analogue media.” The Web, he said, can enrich story-telling capabilities.
At the time of the release of the first graphical Web browser in 1994, Gilder (in Li, 1986)
saw a hybrid model that would upgrade the news, “with full-screen photography and videos,
while hugely enhancing the richness and timeliness of the news” with real-time delivery. Clark
(2006), whose company revolutionized Web browsers, said Netscape would change the way
people communicate and publish information.
Text is enhanced by images, audio and video (Foust, 2005; Dimitrova and Neznanski,
2006) using technologies like Flash (Bradshaw, 2007). There are technical elements, or links to
other sites (Lin and Jeffres, 2001) In addition there are links offering background information.
Another form of enhancement is the presence of dynamic content, or updates (Tremayne et al.,
2007). Hence, storytelling need not be linear (Fredin, 1997).
In both minimal and enhanced interactivity, however, content creation is restricted to the
news organization alone.
Customized interactivity allows users to post their own content in the news organization’s
website, through letters to the editor, or interact among fellow users through chat rooms or
bulletin boards. (Heeter, 1989; Jensen, 1998; Deuze, 2001; Lin and Jeffres, 2001; Bradshaw,
2007). It also lets them personalize the way they will experience a Web site.
Detailed interactive applications used in some news Web sites are described by Schultz
(1999), Dibean and Garrison (2001), Mariano (2001) and the Bivings Group (2008).
While the technology exists, many newspapers seem to be clueless. Newspapers are on
the Web as a perfunctory presence, “still figuring out what to do there” (Brown, 1999). Some
newspapers prioritized text over graphics (Li 1998). A study involving Asian newspapers found
them scoring low on interactivity (Massey and Levy, 1999). Another found that newspapers
hardly took advantage of the nonlinear option (Massey, 2004). Furthermore, a number of papers
view the online as a “complement” of the print paper (Adams, 2007).
Rationale
Although almost 20 years old, the World Wide Web remains a “new” medium
(Boczkowski, 2005) and Philippine newspapers have been online for more than 10 years
(Mariano, 1996). The Web has text and images, but it is not print, which traditional newspapers
are assumed to have mastered. It can carry animation, sound and video files, but it is also
inadequate to call it radio or television. The Web is a convergence of these media. Furthermore,
it has other powerful features, of which Philippine newspapers may not be aware, or have not
employed.
By not skillfully employing these Web features, which could help publishers and the
reading public achieve their goals, newspapers may be compared to the “somnambulists”
described by McLuhan:
“We are no more prepared to encounter radio and TV in our literate milieu than
the native of Ghana is able to cope with the literacy that takes him out of his
collective tribal world and beaches him in individual isolation. We are as numb in
our new electric world as the native involved in our literate and mechanical
culture.”
Question
New wine, new skin. A new medium like the Web should not be viewed simply as an
electronic version of the printed newspaper. Doing so results merely in shovelware, a derisive
term used by Web developers to describe the dumping of static print content onto a Web site
(Odlyzko, 1997; Meyers, 2003) or the minimal “repacking” of print content by adding links
(Chyi and Sylvie, 2000). McLuhan, in the 1960s, cited the need to learn and master the grammar,
the rules, the strengths and weaknesses of a medium. Shovelware does not reveal this mastery.
According to Fidler (1991), a former news executive, newspapers must undergo a creative
transformation, when venturing into Web publishing. Hence, this paper asks, To what extent
have the Web sites of Metro Manila’s broadsheet newspapers undergone a transformation into an
electronic medium? This question can be answered by determining shovelware level and by
identifying and describing the interactive features they used in their Web sites.
Assumptions
The study assumes that the appropriate technology required by news organizations to
reach their markets effectively is readily available, easy to learn and use, and inexpensive.
Another assumption is that economic, environmental, social and technological conditions will
continue to conspire against the production and distribution of the printed newspaper. Finally,
the demand for information – of good quality, in large amounts, and on demand – will remain
and may even grow as the Information Age continues to bloom, and that people will be willing to
pay for access to that information. News is an example of that information.
Framework
McLuhan (1964) contends that each medium has a unique grammar (or set of rules) that
users have to master. He noted that 1960s society was as “numb to the electric world as the
native involved in our literate and mechanical culture.” In the 21st century have news publishers,
steeped in a centuries-old print tradition, mastered the grammar of the Internet, particularly the
World Wide Web?
The journalist is numb when he cannot surf the Web, or do not have e-mail for that
matter. Or insists in the primacy of paper when so many economic, social, environmental factors
suggest that its period of preeminence is over (Outing, 2008). As more and more people use
electronic means to do almost anything, the bias of communication as described by Innis (1951)
has shifted from the physical, concrete and anologue, to the electronic, virtual and digital.
Toffler (1980) suggests that a powerful new technology threatens to wipe out existing
ones with the force of a tidal wave, threatening obsolescence. At the same time the new
technology also offers opportunities. Hammer and Champy (1993) prescribed reengineering, “a
fundamental rethinking and radical transformation” as made necessary by a disruptive
technology. Computer technology has invaded practically every human activity, offering
opportunities, as well as threatening the old order.
Writing about the “new media,” Toffler (1991) suggests six principles, the foremost of
which is interactivity. (The others were mobility, convertibility, connectibility, ubiquitization,

and globalization.) Specific to news publishing, Fidler (1991) calls for a mediamorphosis, a
“creative transformation” from a print product into an electronic medium.
Method
A two-step content analysis was performed on Metro Manila’s nine broadsheet dailies, all
of which have online editions. These are the Business Mirror, BusinessWorld, Daily Tribune,
Malaya, Manila Bulletin, Manila Standard Today, Manila Times, Philippine Daily Inquirer, and
Philippine Star. Degrees of media dominance (or shovelware) were measured in the editorial
content of both editions. Each newspaper was studied over a period of 11 consecutive days, the
same time frame used by Li (1998) and Dibean and Garrison (2001). Weekdays were selected for
uniformity, as some newspapers did not have weekend issues. The second part was to identify
which Web technologies were employed or available in the Web sites. The study adopted some
of the criteria used by the Bivings Group (2008), Dibean and Garrison (2001) and Adams (2007).
Two coders – communication majors who had taken courses in electronic publishing and
research – were trained to make parallel observations of each newspaper’s print and online
versions: they went over the each issue of a newspaper article by article, photo by photo, and
looked for those items online. They likewise reported which material appeared only online.
While the coders worked on the same printed issues, they were not required to view the
Web sites simultaneously. Therefore some variance was expected especially when they reported
on online material. This and perhaps other unforeseen reasons could account for why up to a
third of all material reported by one coder was not similarly reported by the other. Two estimates
of inter-rater reliability (Cohen’s kappa k) were performed, following algorithms for dealing with
missing values (Landis and Koch, 1977) :
a. the “missing” values were substituted with an arbitrary value from outside the scale,
yielding a k of .403), and
b. the cases with missing values were discarded: k=.857.
The data with the missing values were adopted. The lower k happened because one rater
did not observe the case noted by the other, which is not an indication of inter-rater
disagreement. On the other hand, agreement was very high in cases observed by both coders.
Measuring for shovelware: Minimal interactivity. Shovelware refers to the practice of
converting analog print material into digital form, i.e. HTML or its variants (HTM, ASP, ECE)
for text and JPG (or GIF, PNG, BMP) for images, and uploading it to a Web server, with little or
no thought to exploiting the other interactive features of the Web. At its best, shovelware means
that Web content merely mirrors print. For purposes of this paper, the term Paper Primacy meant
that the printed version of a newspaper is larger than the online, i.e., there are more stories and
photos in the paper product, or that the stories are longer in print. On the other hand, Digital
Primacy would mean that the online version is larger, both in terms of story and photo count, and
story length.
A five-point scale was developed to reflect media dominance for stories, and a three-
point scale for photos and other images based on the values used in evaluating individual stories
and photos. The means were obtained by adding up the scores and dividing them by the number
of cases.
Stories:
0 = story appears only in the print edition
1 = story appears in both print and Web editions but the print version is longer
2 = story appears in both media in equal length
3 = story appears in both media and the Web version is longer
4 = story appears in the Web version only
Photos:
0 = photo appears only in the print edition
2 = photo appears in both print and Web editions
4 = photo appears only in both media in equal length
Interpreting the means:

<2.000 = The print edition is larger than the online. The lower the mean, the greater the
Paper Primacy.
2.000 = Shovelware. There is an exact correspondence: each print item is also online.
>2,000 = The online edition is larger than the print. The higher the mean than 2.000,
Digital Primacy increases and Paper Primacy decreases.
Web features: Enhanced & customized interactivity. The online features used by Metro
Manila newspapers can be classified according to:
a. immediacy – refers to those features that exploit the medium’s ability to deliver
information instantaneously
b. media richness or the convergence of various media – features that provide users
with more than just one way of appreciating information
c. information retrieval – features that permit users options with which to find and
retrieve information stored in the newspaper’s Web site
d. customization – features that allow users options with which to personalize their
Web experience; includes options for feedback and posting original material.
Averages were computed dividing the number of applications in use by the number of
available applications multiplied by the number of newspapers:
applications used
Ave. = --------------------------------------------------------------
(no. of available applications x no. of newspapers)
Breaking news. Further analysis of news Web sites that had links for Breaking News or
News Updates was performed. Breaking news is an example of immediacy. The following
variables were noted:
a. story type – general news (politics, weather, peace and order, armed conflict),
business and economy, entertainment, sports, opinion, and features.
b. Length – 1=short (1-5 news paragraphs), 2=medium (6-10 paragraphs), 3=long

(more than 10)
c. author – staff (in-house writers, reporters, editors, correspondents), wire agencies

and syndicates (Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Xinhua, Bloomberg, etc.),
and contributors.
d. lagtime – the gap between the check-up time and the time of the latest update. The
check-up time was not fixed, but ranged from 11:30 to 16:00.
e. update rate – can be represented as updates-per-hour, or the interval between

updates. Updates-per-hour was measured by dividing the number of updates by the
amount of time elapsed in the calendar day as of check-up time. The interval
between stories is the inverse of updates-per-hour, i.e. the amount of time elapsed (in
minutes) divided by the number of updates.
Results
Summary
Nine Metro Manila daily broadsheets were examined over an 11-weekday period in June
2009. Two raters were assigned to each newspaper. They reported 19,834 stories and 7,838
photos. Stories referred to text material that was written by staff reporters or columnists,
underwent review by a staff editor, and did not constitute advertising. Images were photographs
or illustrations taken or created by staff photographers or artists, underwent review by a staff
editor, and did not constitute advertising. Of the totals reported, more than half of the stories
appeared in both print and online versions, but only a fifth of the photos (Fig. 1). More than
three-quarters of photos printed did not go online and slightly over a third of stories were only
used in print. Very little of text and photos appeared exclusively online.
Shovelware. The overall mean for both text and images was .992 (scale: 0.000 to 4.000),
indicating a general condition of Paper Primacy. Four newspapers had combined means of less
than 1.000 (Table 1). The Philippine Star rated the highest, at 1.530 although this meant that by
and large it was below even the shovelware cutoff of 2.000.
The mean for stories was 1.464, even as the newspapers that led in terms of online
content – the Manila Times and the Philippine Star – barely surpassed shovelware level. This
means that in general, there were fewer stories in these newspapers’ Web sites than are printed.
Paper Primacy in stories was most pronounced in the Manila Bulletin and Malaya.
Fig. 1. Distribution of stories (Ns19,834) and photos (Np=7,838).
Photographs reflected even greater Paper Primacy, with the overall mean at .519. Except
for the BusinessWorld and Star, which registered means slightly higher than 1.000, all others fell
below that figure, six of them having means lower than the average. Malaya and Manila
Standard Today barely had photos online.
Stories Photos Combined

Newspaper
Mean N Mean N Mean N
Philippine Star 2.019 2,386 1.042 620 1.530 3,006
BusinessWorld 1.442 2,147 1.193 553 1.318 2,700
Manila Times 2.028 1,465 0.367 458 1.197 1,923
Philippine Daily Inquirer 1.698 2,917 0.434 1,272 1.066 4,189
Daily Tribune 1.774 1,312 0.282 653 1.028 1,965
BusinessMirror 1.091 2,625 0.723 1,034 0.907 3,659
Manila Bulletin 0.983 3,392 0.350 1,536 0.667 4,928
Manila Standard Today 1.165 1,458 0.110 673 0.637 2,131
Malaya 0.974 2,132 0.173 1,039 0.574 3,171
1.464 19,834 0.519 7,838 0.992 27,672
Table 1. Shovelware index, ranked according to combined means
If shovelware, a minimum indicator of interactivity, means a correspondence between
print and online content, Manila newspapers were way below shovelware level.
Content appearing in both media. Another indicator of shovelware, this measure involves
the amount of print material that also appeared online, and does not include online exclusives.
Overall, print, at 54.3%, was slightly larger than online (Table 2). More than two thirds of print
stories were also found online, but less than a quarter of print photos.
Among individual newspapers, the Star and BusinessWorld led in combined uploaded
print content at >60%. On the other end, Malaya, Bulletin and Manila Standard Today uploaded
less than 32% of its print material.
Stories Photos Combined

Newspaper Print Print & Print Print & Print Print &
N N N
Only Web Only Web Only Web
Philippine Star 17.1% 82.9% 1,974 51.9% 48.1% 595 34.5% 65.5% 2,569
BusinessWorld 32.1% 67.9% 2,057 41.2% 58.8% 548 36.7% 63.4% 2,605
Manila Times 6.3% 93.7% 1,354 84.3% 15.7% 446 45.3% 54.7% 1,800
Daily Tribune 11.3% 88.7% 1,312 87.0% 13.0% 646 49.2% 50.9% 1,958
Philippine Daily Inquirer 30.5% 69.5% 2,468 80.2% 19.8% 1,248 55.4% 44.7% 3,716
BusinessMirror 50.3% 49.7% 2,574 66.5% 33.5% 1,006 58.4% 41.6% 3,580
Manila Standard Today 41.9% 58.1% 1,457 94.5% 5.5% 672 68.2% 31.8% 2,129
Manila Bulletin 53.4% 46.6% 3,293 84.4% 15.6% 1,506 68.9% 31.1% 4,799
Malaya 52.9% 47.1% 2,099 91.3% 8.7% 1,039 72.1% 27.9% 3,138
32.9% 67.1% 18,588 75.7% 24.3% 7,706 54.3% 45.7% 26,294
Table 2. Percentage of print content that also appeared online, ranked according to combined print & web.
Nearly two-thirds of all stories came out in both media. The Manila Times uploaded
93.7% of its stories, followed by the Daily Tribune (88.7%) and the Star (82.9%). Three
newspapers had less than half their print stories online: Bulletin, Malaya and Business Mirror.
For photos, the overall figure was 24.3%. The top uploaders of photos that were also
printed were BusinessWorld (58.8%), Star (48.1%), while the laggards were Malaya (8.7%) and
Manila Standard Today (5.5 %).

Online Exclusives. These stories and photos came out only on the Web during the same
11-day period. While two newspapers – the Inquirer and Star – vigorously posted exclusives in
the form of breaking news, two others – Tribune and Standard – barely had any. (Fig. 3). There
were also fewer photos that appeared only online. Online exclusives were usually, but not limited
to, breaking stories.
All in all, the print version was larger than the online.
449
450 412
400
350 Stories Photos
300
250
200
150 111
99 90
100
52
50 24 25 30 28 33
12 5 1 1 7
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ir e Sta ime orl irro lay oda une
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Fig. 2. Frequency of stories and photos appearing only online, ranked according to stories.
Web Features
Previous studies of online features cited 30 such applications. Labels or classifications
were adapted to reflect current conditions. Some features also excluded (e.g. languages) or added
(stock market information), for a total of 39 applications.
The data show that newspapers, as a whole, employed 34 such online features, the most
popular of which can be found in Table 3. Columnists’ e-mail addresses, the peso-dollar
exchange rate and search engines appear in all the Web sites. However, the applications are not
all uniform, e.g. not all columnists post an e-mail address.
Not found in the Web sites were options to allow readers to post their own material,
although the Star had a rarely updated Readers Section. News Web sites did not provide story
backgrounders, or give users the chance to give feedback directly to reporters. Four newspapers,
led by the Inquirer and Star, used upward of 10 applications (Table 4).
Web Feature f
Columnists e-mail 9
Currencies 9
Search engine 9
Issue is current 8
Stock market 8
Archives 6
E-mail story 5
Print story 5
RSS feed 5
Weather 5
Table 3. 10 most popular Web features
Convergence features rated the lowest, although five newspapers boasted of providing
real-time RSS feeds. Four offered PDF options which, except for one, allow user to download or
view the entire print edition free. Hardly used were videos, sound and SMS.
The BusinessWorld had current, daily three-minute audiocasts which could be accessed
on iTunes or with the Google reader.
The Inquirer had a Newsmaker Podcast, a repository of audio files and hosted by
radioportal.com. However, the only files uploaded went back to the 2007 elections and President
Arroyo’s 2007 State of the Nation Address. No files were added since. The Inquirer was the only
newspaper that posted videos.

Feature BM BW DT M MB MST MT PDI PS Total

1. Breaking news 4
Immediacy 2. Currencies1 9
ave.=.619 3. Current date 8
4. Flash boxes 3
5. Stock market2 8
6. Twitter 2
7. Weather3 5
8. Audiocast 2
9. Photo gallery 2
10. PDF4 4
Convergence
11. Mobile version 1
ave.=.222
12. RSS feed 5
13. SMS alerts 1
14. Story background 0
15. Video 1
16. Related stories 2
17. Reporters blogs 1
18. Archive 6
19. Search engine 9
Retrieval
20. Article index 2
ave.=.375
21. Author index 1
22. Column index 3
23. Most popular 2
24. Tags 1
25. Article comments 2
26. Columnists email 9
27. Editors email 3
Feedback
28. Reporters email 0
ave.=.349
29. Feedback form 4
30. Polls 2
31. Forums/blogs 2
32. Social media 3
33. E-mail story 5
34. Print story 5
Customization 35. Adjust text size 2
ave.=.264 36. User registration 3
37. User articles 1
38. User photos 0
39. User videos 0
Total 12 14 6 7 17 5 10 28 22 121
Table 4. Web features used by Metro Manila news Web sites. Ave.=.345
1
Generally static, except for one with a link to the PSE site. Another had an interactive currency converter.
2
Generally static information, although three Web sites carried the live Philippine Stock Exchange ticker.
3
Static information lifted from the government weather site. Some Web sites had links to other weather sites.
4
Except for one, the entire issue can be downloaded as a PDF.
Retrieval and Feedback options normed at 0.33. All Web sites had search engines,
usually the Google CSE (customized search engine). The Bulletin used the Yahoo CSE while
BusinessWorld had its own search robot. The Inquirer and the Star made finding information
easier by identifying related stories and tags, and by providing facilities like an author index or a
column index. These terms search engine and archives were loosely used and often interchanged.
The BusinessWorld had a variety of search options. One was free but limited. For
instance some stories would display only the lead paragraph, the rest available only to paying
subscribers. Another, a paid service, offered information, the amount of which corresponded to
the subscription plan.
Strictly speaking, an archive is an place (or in the case of Web sites, a page) in which a
reader can find material sorted by topic, alphabet or chronology. Five newspapers had an archive
link in their navigation bars. Those of the Tribune and the Standard did not work. The Manila
Times archive was only searchable for 2008 and 2009, Malaya’s only for the current year,
although the resourceful user can also find issues for those dates of the previous year not yet
covered by the current year, by typing the URL the long way.
The most comprehensive and extensive archives or search engines were those of the
Inquirer and the Star. The Inquirer though could be confusing to the casual Internet surfer and
even intimidating to the technophobe. The Inquirer archive went back six years, to March 2003.
Boolean search logic, the key feature of Yahoo and Google search engines, simplified
search. It also made a separate archive page redundant. In philstar.com, all a user needed was to
type in a key word (or words) and Google returned links arranged from the most recent.
However, philstar required logging in, which entailed a one-time, free registration.
Breaking News. Four newspapers – BusinessWorld, Bulletin, Inquirer and Star – featured
material labeled as Breaking News or News Updates.
On the average, the data show 15.2 story updates a day, ranging from 3 (BusinessWorld )
to 28 (Star), or one update per hour. Star had about two updates every hour, BusinessWorld one
every four hours. The updates averaged between 6 and 10 newspaper-style paragraphs each.
The Bulletin’s update box displayed eight items at a time. Unlike the other newspapers, it
did not have the day’s repository of breaking stories. There was evidence that there were more
updates that day than what was displayed. However, since the observations were done only once
a day, only eight could be accounted for at any given moment.
Lagtime Updates/ Interval

Updates
(hh:mm) hr (hh:mm)
Newspaper Ave. N Length Ave. SD Ave. SD Ave. SD
Manila Bulletin 6.6 72 2.5 4:46 6:14 0.44 0.29 02:19 01:15
BusinessWorld 3.1 34 1.3 11:58 16:04 0.21 0.15 04:30 01:49
Inquirer 23.2 255 2.3 0:39 1:12 1.62 0.46 00:40 00:13
Star 27.9 307 2.2 0:15 0:23 1.87 0.38 00:33 00:10
15.2 2.1 4:24 1.0 02:00
Table 5. Breaking news.
The lagtime, of the freshness of an update compared with the check-up time, could be as
short as 4 minutes (Star) and as long as 4.5 hours (Bulletin). The average lagtime for the Star
was 15 minutes, and 39 minutes for the Inquirer. On one occasion, the lagtime for the
BusinessWorld was as little as 9 minutes, but the average was pulled down by those days in
which no updates were recorded.
Most of the breaking stories were of the general variety (45% overall, 62% for the
Inquirer) and produced by wire agencies (51% overall, 86% for the Star). The Bulletin tended to
post “soft” stories (entertainment and features, for a combined 64%) instead of accounts of
events whose freshness is a premium. Sometimes the updates appeared to be a reporter’s notes
rather than news stories. More than half of the BusinessWorld’s updates were about business and
the economy.
Newspaper % N
Manila Times 80 35
Business Mirror 67 24
Malaya 62 13
Manila Bulletin 59 34
BusinessWorld 56 25
Philippine Daily Inquirer50 71
Philippine Star 41 97
Daily Tribune 36 14
Manila Standard Today 33 15
52% 328
Table 6. Columnist e-mail.
N=number of columnists whose e-mail addresses were displayed.
%=percentage of all known columnists in that paper during the period of observation.
Feedback could be sent through a generic feedback (or Contact Us) form. Some
columnists in all the newspapers posted their e-mail or Web addresses, although on the average
only a little over a half of all columnists did so (Table 6). The Inquirer and the Star allowed
users to comment on individual articles as well as to post messages in forums or blogs. The
Feedback links on the Tribune and Standard sites were not working.
There were at least four ways for a reader to send feedback in the Manila news Web sites:
a. using a general feedback form

b. sending an e-mail to the editors
c. sending an e-mail directly to columnists; no option for emailing reporters
d. posting comments on a forum or a blog.
The first kind, used by four newspapers, could be a dead-end because of the practice of
some Web developers to direct the form to the Webmaster, usually an IT personnel who may not
exercise any editorial authority. Hence there was no assurance that an editor, or the appropriate
editor, would get the e-mail, read it, or forward it to the person one intended to reach.
The second variety, used by three newspapers, assumed that one wanted to write an
editor, but not a reporter.
All newspapers displayed the e-mail or Web addresses of some of their columnists at the
end of the article. This allowed readers to get in touch directly with columnists without the
mediation of editors. Unfortunately, reporters’ e-mail addresses were not disclosed.
The Inquirer and the Star also had e-forums in which readers could post their comments
on articles without any third-party editing, although Star users must be registered. Inquirer
comments were posted on Facebook and any registered Facebook user could post a comment.
The Star and the Bulletin sites also featured online polls.
Customization was minimal. Five newspapers allowed users to print or e-mail stories.
Social networking and bookmarking, collectively called social media, were possible in three sites
(For the distinction, see Social networking vs social bookmarking vs the rest). The Inquirer and
the Star also allowed users to adjust the text size on their browsers.
Discussion
Shovelware. Data showed that Manila’s newspapers were still in the shovelware level,
which means that the Web content was never bigger than the print. Print is a finite medium,
limited by space. Every publisher knows that printing an extra page incurs significant additional
costs in terms of paper stock, production and shipping. On the other hand, the Web is an almost
infinite space, with memory storage capacity growing by the day, while its cost becomes
increasingly more affordable. When publishers are merely publishing shovelware, they are
reinforcing the notion that the online edition is a mere complement of the paper (Adams, 2007).
It is clear as far as Manila news publishers are concerned print remains the dominant medium,
although this appears to be the same case in major American newspapers (Maier, 2010).
Low Convergence/Interactivity. While online text rated higher than photos, the Web was
greatly underutilized as publishers relied more on the printed word. With the emphasis,
especially in advertising and entertainment, on multimedia, newspapers fall short of maximizing
the Web’s storytelling capabilities. Photos, slightly richer than text, were scarcely used in the
news Web sites.
The use of audiovisual media was almost nonexistent. Yet, many publishers acknowledge
that the greatest threat to their business was television (Schultz and Voakes, 1999; Mogel, 2000;
Lenhoff, 2008). The Web does not involve the huge costs that come with broadcasting, can
easily accommodate instantaneous sounds and moving pictures at no added cost. As far as
multimedia are concerned, the Web can level the playing field. Newspapers can take advantage
of this, even if it means reporters must also be visually (or aurally) literate. (On the other hand,
TV stations running news Web sites already hold the visual edge. If they could learn how to
provide text with as much depth as print journalists do, then newspapers are indeed in serious
trouble. Already, gmanews.tv, the Web site of GMA Network, is showing that it is a good
benchmark for a news Web site. One advantage going for broadcasters is they don’t share print’s
definition of a deadline.)
If journalists thrive on backgrounders for their stories, their Web sites (just like the print
product) fail to make these available to their online readers. Backgrounds can be links to
previous articles on the same subject, or maps for the geographically-challenged. They can help
greatly in helping readers better understand a story.
Three newspapers offered users another medium, a PDF of the print issue. Readers could
download the Business Mirror one PDF page at a time, while registered account holders could
get sections of the BusinessWorld. The Manila Times only provided the front page PDFs. A
recent notable addition (beginning August 2009) is the Bulletin e-Paper. Users can view the
whole paper, while registered users can tap some of the interactive features.
A newspaper is not expected to use all tools at the same time. Information overload
occurs even in the interactive multimedia environment (Schumacher, 2005). But ignoring the
options to text is almost the same as giving up the opportunities presented by the Web.
The low use of interactivity shows that little has changed since Massey and Levy (1999)
and Massey (2004). This observation is also consistent with a more recent observation (Russial,
2009).
Deadlines. Like many of their counterparts in the other media, print journalists are time-
conscious. They are keenly aware of the hazards of missing the deadline. In Manila, this is
usually between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. for the morning papers. Reporters race to beat the deadline
strictly enforced by editors. They also strive to get a story ahead of their rivals. Getting
“scooped” is a serious embarrassment for a print journalist. The deadline and the scoop are
connected to the value journalists attach to news.
By midnight, most newspapers are printed, bearing the date of a day that is yet to break in
six hours. That is how print journalists define currency: get the latest story by deadline. Between
today’s deadline and tomorrow’s is a 24-hour break, a long period of time in the Digital Age, in
which updates can be done almost instantaneously.
Only four newspapers featured breaking stories, but two of them – the Inquirer and Star –
made good use of this capability. The rest updated their sites late at night, apparently after the
paper had gone to press. This seriously undermined the power of the Web to deliver information
at electronic speed. The Standard Web site was updated late in the next day, a strange case of the
Web catching up with print. And here is where print is most vulnerable to the broadcast media,
and broadcasters who are also online.
E-mail feedback. More than half of columnists observed published their e-mail addresses, but
none of the reporters did. American journalists thought that publishing their e-mail addresses
gave the impression that a newspaper cared about their readers’ perceptions and opinions
(Hendrickson, 2006). It also showed how they were in touch with the community they claimed to
serve. Because e-mail is more convenient and faster than the post, it promotes a more dynamic
interaction between media and society. Because e-mail is also asynchronous, unlike a telephone
call, it provides readers an alternative in case they want a less personal approach, and gives
journalists the option of responding at their convenience.
User Registration. The need for registration and logging in can be a deterrent to Web use. But
newspapers being businesses can benefit, at the very least, from the demographic information
provided by the user.
In the BusinessWorld, registration allowed users to download PDF copies of the
newspaper. The Star required signing up to access its search engine and to post comments in its
forums.
BusinessWorld had free and fee-based registration options. The free service gave users
access to regular content. The paying service, called Codex, had unlimited and on-demand
versions that offered full-text access to the BusinessWorld archive. While the other newspapers
offered free access, BusinessWorld was showing that it was possible to charge for good
information. Murdoch, the American mega-publisher, had advocated this three-tier online
publishing model in his 2008 Boyer lecture as a way for publishers to thrive in the information
era.
Customized interactivity. The new technology is challenging, if not shattering, the role of
media as gate-keepers of information between source and audience. Blogs and their variants like
Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have made publishers of everyone. While professional
journalists retain a distinct advantage because of their skill and competence, and the overall
quality assurance of their work, what is clear is that ordinary people do have something to say
and now have relatively easy access to a public forum. In this regard, some news organizations
have chosen to ignore, or be threatened, their readers or viewers and instead actively engage
them. And as the experience shows, regular folks are happy to oblige. Their contributions may
offer alternative even conflicting accounts of events, but they contribute to a richer discussion.
CNN’s iReport publishes content that is entirely user-produced, although some stories eventually
earn the network’s badge after vetting (ireport.com). BBC encourages contributions in general
(bbc.co.uk/terms) and some programs in particular (bbc.co.uk/theoneshow/yourstories). The
United Press International’s UPIU program invites students to send in content that could earn
them an eventual UPI byline (www.upiu.com/contents/about_upiu). The Bivings Group (2008)
reports that the number of American newspapers that accept user-generated photos, videos and
articles has doubled over a year.
Greer and Mensing (2004) have found that big U.S. newspapers had been learning the
new grammar, using more interactive features on their Web sites and exploiting revenue
potentials. While this paper does not consider advertising and other profit opportunities, the data
will give a hint that a possible correlation exists between the interactivity level of Manila
newspapers and profitability (or the prospects thereof), and that could be the subject of another
inquiry. What we can detect is that some Manila publications are getting it and are exploring
how to make the most out of the new media, because they are discovering its moneymaking
potential, and more will do so when they too experience this realization. Keshvani (2008)
describes the Singapore Straits Times Interactive’s aggressive and deliberate adoption of the new
media. The time will come when publishers will learn that volume (or gross revenue) is not the
name of the game, but profit (when costs are deducted from revenue). Because of possible
savings from printing and shipping costs, publishers can in fact realize higher profits if they
devote more attention to their online operations. But first they must get used to it.
Conclusions
Understanding the grammar of a medium means, among others, knowing hot to make the
most out of it. Because of features like immediacy, convergence, information retrieval and
customization, the Web becomes immensely superior to print.
This paper asked to which extent the Web sites of Metro Manila broadsheet newspapers
had undergone a transformation into an electronic medium. It sought to determine the
shovelware level of Metro Manila’s broadsheet daily newspapers. Data showed that on the
average, these newspapers did not even achieve shovelware level even if the term is itself
derogatory, that is, editorial content on print was larger than the online. Photos and other non-
text media were used even more rarely. The study also aimed to identify which interactive
features relevant to news publishers were employed in these newspapers. The most widely used
features were those pertaining to immediacy, while the rest were underutilized.
While there were news sites that used more interactive feature than others we conclude
that on the whole, Metro Manila newspapers failed to exploit the power of Web technology.
They remain text-heavy, are low on interactivity, and play a back-up role to the print version.
It is almost paradoxical that some publishers view the Internet as a threat (Ferguson,
2006; Leckner, 2007), when they can use its very technology to serve their goal of selling quality
information at the quickest time possible and at the least cost. In other words, while newspaper
publishing may indeed be an imperiled industry, the prospects are bright for journalism, thanks
to the new technology. And yet, when Web technology is placed at their disposal, many of
publishers appear to be stuck in the old “dead trees” paradigm and fail to learn the new rules.
In 1999 Brown noted that newspapers found it necessary to carry an Internet edition but
had little idea of how to make the most of it. Eleven years hence, little has changed.
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Running Head: HOW METRO MANILA NEWSPAPERS USE WEB TECHNOLOGY

How Metro Manila Newspapers Use Web Technology

Sabbatical Paper URCO U54 S U 3 08

Revised August 2010

and, of course, interactivity (Seib, 2001).

grouped as minimal, enhanced and customized interactivity.

Minimal interactivity is transmissional or allocutional (Jensen, 1998, as cited in

information) richness, defined as “the ability of information to change understanding within a

Communication transactions that can overcome different frames of reference or

They ranked face-to-face communication as information-richest, and in descending order:

standalone media, when the different modalities converge.

people communicate and publish information.

2007). Hence, storytelling need not be linear (Fredin, 1997).

news organization alone.

view the online as a “complement” of the print paper (Adams, 2007).

pay for access to that information. News is an example of that information.

World Wide Web?

fundamental rethinking and radical transformation” as made necessary by a disruptive

opportunities, as well as threatening the old order.

which is interactivity. (The others were mobility, convertibility, connectibility, ubiquitization,

“creative transformation” from a print product into an electronic medium.

missing values (Landis and Koch, 1977) :

b. the cases with missing values were discarded: k=.857.

Measuring for shovelware: Minimal interactivity. Shovelware refers to the practice of

Interpreting the means:

Manila newspapers can be classified according to:

available applications multiplied by the number of newspapers:

variables were noted:

b. Length – 1=short (1-5 news paragraphs), 2=medium (6-10 paragraphs), 3=long

c. author – staff (in-house writers, reporters, editors, correspondents), wire agencies

e. update rate – can be represented as updates-per-hour, or the interval between

or illustrations taken or created by staff photographers or artists, underwent review by a staff

and large it was below even the shovelware cutoff of 2.000.

Fig. 1. Distribution of stories (Ns19,834) and photos (Np=7,838).

Standard Today barely had photos online.

Stories Photos Combined

If shovelware, a minimum indicator of interactivity, means a correspondence between

less than 32% of its print material.

Stories Photos Combined

Manila Standard Today (5.5 %).

to, breaking stories.

350 Stories Photos

Previous studies of online features cited 30 such applications. Labels or classifications

(stock market information), for a total of 39 applications.

all uniform, e.g. not all columnists post an e-mail address.

Table 3. 10 most popular Web features

on iTunes or with the Google reader.

newspaper that posted videos.

Feature BM BW DT M MB MST MT PDI PS Total

the subscription plan.

material labeled as Breaking News or News Updates.

a day, only eight could be accounted for at any given moment.

Lagtime Updates/ Interval

Table 5. Breaking news.

which no updates were recorded.

a. using a general feedback form

editor, but not a reporter.

mediation of editors. Unfortunately, reporters’ e-mail addresses were not disclosed.

especially in advertising and entertainment, on multimedia, newspapers fall short of maximizing

news Web sites.

greatly in helping readers better understand a story.

connected to the value journalists attach to news.