A new study finds that interest groups, from political outlets to business organizations, have a growing opportunity to use the decline of newspapers to promote their views and causes.

New Jersey's Hall Institute of Public Policy reviewed the way such groups used their websites in the 2008 elections to promote causes and seek to replace the declining relevance of newspapers.

“Interest groups have a unique opportunity to use their websites to fill the void resulting from the decline of newspapers, but they have much more to do in order to reach their potential,” according to the study posted today on the Hall Institute website.“The researchers identified eight issue areas pertinent to New Jersey listed on the campaign sites of the two major party candidates - incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg and Republican challenger Richard Zimmer - and then examined websites of groups with an interest in those issue areas, which included the economy and taxes; homeland security and chemical safety; transportation; healthcare; the military; education; energy and the environment, and immigration.”

But the findings suggested that the opportunity for these groups to use Web options is not being utilized: “The researchers used a grading scale that ranged from 5 points for an A to 1 point for an F, and also gave incompletes to organizations that failed to fulfill any of the study criteria”

“Interest group websites generally proved to be less than robust sources of campaign-related information,” the authors said. “Among the 67 total interest group website evaluations conducted, the average grade was a 3.47, which falls just between a C and a B. Many of the interest groups whose websites were examined did not fully take advantage of the opportunities of the medium and leave much room for improvement.”