Jon Dube distills some stats from a new report by the Bivings Group on American newspapers and the Internet:

*80 of the nation's top 100 newspapers offered reporter blogs. On 63 of these blogs, readers could comment on posts written by reporters.
* 76 of the nation's top 100 newspapers offer RSS feeds on their websites. All of these feeds are partial feeds, and none included ads.
* Video is offered by 61 of the newspapers.

Newspapers Internet efforts, however, could be undermined further if more advertising is lured in a different direction. Terry Heaton explains a new scheme where Google has teamed up with direct-mail coupon distributor Valpak that will allow local merchants to distribute printable coupons via Google maps. Google says the aim of the initiative is "to improve the user experience and increase traffic at the Maps site." Terry, however, sees it a bit differently: "Of course the real aim is, again, to pull money from local advertisers into the Google coffers, and this is another slap in the face of local media companies and local ad agencies who continue to try and force their reach/frequency model on everybody (and insist that the earth is flat). Google continues to prove that they don't need the blessing of the status-quo to suck cash out of local markets, and this will be the downfall of those who view Internet pure play companies as a nuisance instead of a threat. "