The Italian study was the most elaborate of the three, done by blogger/journalist Luca Conti , and is in a 19-page PDF file (in Italian, of course). Conti told me via email that he did the report out of curiosity, wondering how Italian newspaper sites measured up to American sites. But soon, the report paid off for Conti.

“Yesterday I wrote an article for Nova24, a weekly edition dedicated to innovation and technology,” Conti said. “It was my first article for Nova24 and the topic was my study. The PDF [for the study] has been downloaded more than 300 times in a week. The house organ of the National Association of Italian Communication Agencies asked me to write a two page article about the study.”

“Italian newspapers have mixed feelings with the Internet,” Conti said. “A small group have feeds, blogs, forums and sometimes something more. A big group (19 out of 50) has a registration wall, usually you have to pay, only for reading articles written for the paper edition. We have a low adoption of Web 2.0 tools. La Repubblica.it is the most read newspaper online and offline. It is the most advanced. It has a real-time PDF edition, many blogs, Internet radio and TV station that also broadcasts on digital terrestrial waves, with audio and video podcasts and many RSS feeds. The second one, Corriere della Sera has feeds, a video edition for the web, no podcasts, no blogs, but many forums.”