Media analysis and Web design firm The Bivings Group just completed a first-time study that looks at what journalists and their newspaper employers are doing with Twitter.

The report, The Use of Twitter by America’s Newspapers, studied whether newspapers link to their Twitter accounts from their Web site, how often, and in what manner; how and when the accounts are updated; and whether newspapers are using their Twitter profiles to interact with readers or to simply promote their site content.

Key findings:

* Only 62 percent of the newspapers included links to at least one of their accounts from their Web site. Many buried these links on the site, making it difficult to even find them.  The sad news, then, is that 38 percent of the papers actively use Twitter but don’t bother to integrate their presence with their Web site even minimally.  That’s a shame.

* Slightly more than half of the newspapers have a directory listing of their Twitter accounts on their site. The Los Angeles Times, for example, lists Twitter accounts by section, and by individual Twitter profile, and invites readers to follow them by setting up a free Twitter account. Smart!

* The number of followers was really amazing. The 300 profiles studied average more than 17,000 followers, though they only followed back an average of 1470 each. The figure is misleading, however, as four accounts had more than 100,000 followers – and the report makes that clear. Removing these four, the average follow works out to 3,447 users. That’s still a lot.  The jury is still out, however, on whether thousands of followers actually lead to increased traffic or revenue for the followed profilers’ venture. 

*The Twitter profiles of the newspapers send out an average of 11 tweets per day. At the bottom end of the frequency list are Big Picture at The Boston Globe, The Akron Beacon Journal and Woody Paige from The Denver Post, who post 1.1 tweets each day. The Boston Herald takes the top spot with 95.5 tweets a day. 

* Rather than automatic postings, 70 percent of tweets were updated manually, with about half using Twitter itself. Twitterfeed was used by 28 percent to post RSS feeds. Tweetdeck and Hootsuite were popular as well. 

* Most of the journalists did not reply to tweets of their followers, which comes as no surprise. That’s a common issue with Twitter, unfortunately.  While Twitter is a viable reporting and research tool and in theory a good tactic for viral marketing, we feel strongly from our own experience that those with Twitter profiles are more likely to talk than listen.

Here’s the complete report.