Complete report

When asked "how trustworthy do you find the local news content on the website you most frequently visit for local news?" on a seven-point scale (7 = very trustworthy), the 161 respondents that went online for local news gave a rating of 5.60 (standard deviation = 1.2). In comparison, the 1,251 editors gave an average rating of 6.61, significantly higher than did the general public, with a standard deviation of 0.74 (for editors, website was defined as their newspapers').

Next, both groups were asked to compare the trustworthiness of the web report they see with that of the sponsoring news organization. As shown on the next page, 75% of the public users of online local news and 74% of the editors trusted the news organization's news report online the same as in print; 15% of the public and 24% of the editors trusted print more; and ten percent of the public and three percent of the editors trusted the web report more.

To further understand how the quality of local news online was perceived, the general public respondents were asked whether the quality of the web report influenced their regard for the overall news organization. As shown below, 32% of the online local news users thought the quality improved their regard, 63% reported it did not make any difference, and about three percent said it lowered their regard for the overall news organization.

The 52 local news users who thought the quality of web report improved their regard for the overall news organization were then asked how local news report online fared with print media in terms of accuracy, timeliness, completeness, and etc. Table 4 illustrates the percentages of those who reported "yes."

[General Public]

It should be noted that some unique features of web report (compared to print media) were well reflected in the responses of those who thought the quality of web report improved their regard for the news organization. For example, 73% of the 52 respondents thought the web report was "more timely," 71% (web report) "guides me to more information about news I care about," and 65% (web report) "publishes language, photos & video that are civil and decent."

According to the design of the survey, those who thought the quality of web report lowered their regard for the news organization were asked if the web report was "less accurate," "less timely," "less complete," and etc. The results are not reported here because the effective sample size (3.1% of the 161 online local news users or 5 in total) was too small to lead to meaningful findings.

When asked "have you noticed any differences in what is published on the web and what is published in the print newspaper or reported on news broadcasts?" half of the online local news users said "yes," 45% "no," and five percent either were not sure or did not know.