Posted on 08/17/2008 1:06:31 PM PDT by abb
The always-interesting results of the biennial news consumption survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press were released Sunday afternoon. Findings on TV news and online-only news produced a few surprises (follow to come), but on the newspaper front the indications were mainly negative, especially on the print front, but also in some aspects of newspapers on the Web.
Namely: while more young people are indeed reading newspapers online, their total readership, print and Web combined, has not grown in two years.
This survey was conducted by telephone from April 30 to June 1 among 3,612 adults nationwide.
Looking first at print, Pew reveals, “This year for the first time in roughly 15 years of asking the question, fewer than half of all Americans report reading a daily newspaper on a regular basis. Only 46% say they read the paper regularly – this number is down from 52% in 2006 and was as high as 71% in 1992. In a similar vein, fewer now report having read a newspaper 'yesterday,' a more reliable measure of newspaper readership. Only 34% say they read a newspaper yesterday, down from 40% in 2006.
“The falloff in readership over the past two years has occurred across the board – men and women, whites and blacks, college graduates and those who never attended college are all reading the newspaper at lower rates than in 2006. Age continues to be strongly correlated with newspaper readership&hellip.Currently, only 15% of those younger than 25 report having read a newspaper yesterday. Among those ages 25 to 34, 24% read a newspaper yesterday. This compares with roughly half (46%) of those 50 and older.”
On the other hand: “The audience for online newspapers has grown modestly since 2006. In the current survey, 13% say they read the web version of a newspaper yesterday, or both the print and online versions, up from 9% two years ago. Yet that increase has not made up for the steep loss in print readership (from 34% to 25%).
“Still, online newspapers are gaining readers, especially among people ages 25 to 34. Among people in this age group who read a newspaper yesterday, fully 16% report having read the paper online; slightly fewer (12%) say they read the paper version.
"The proportion of this age group reporting it read an online newspaper yesterday has doubled – from 9% in 2006 to 19% in 2008." But here's the kicked: "Even so, total newspaper readership among those ages 25 to 34 has not increased over the past two years."
Weeklies, however, are doing a little better: "At a time when daily newspapers are losing readers, the audience for local weekly community newspapers has remained relatively stable. Currently, 33% say they read such newspapers regularly, about the same as in 2006 (35%) and 2004 (36%)....
"As is the case with daily newspapers, however, weekly community newspapers are much more popular with older people than young people. Four-in-ten of those 50 and older say they regularly a community newspaper, double the percentage of those 24 and younger (19%)." Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor.
ping
http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/
Game-changing newspaper buyers
http://gannettblog.blogspot.com/
http://people-press.org/report/444/news-media
Key News Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources
bookmark for later reading
Liberal media
Nightly TV: 29
Newspaper: 34
Considering FoxNews is far and away the cable news leader and most radio news is conservative talk radio, indeed the liberal media is dying rapidly. No wonder the rats want to impose the Unfairness Doctrine.
Key News Audiences Now Blend Online and Traditional Sources
... Net-Newsers are the youngest of the news user segments (median age: 35). They are affluent and even better educated than the News Integrators: More than eight-in-ten have at least attended college. Net-Newsers not only rely primarily on the internet for news, they are leading the way in using new web features and other technologies. Nearly twice as many regularly watch news clips on the internet as regularly watch nightly network news broadcasts (30% vs. 18%). ...
Why Teens Are Skipping The Olympics
Teens are skipping the Olympics this year, according to Wired, because the Olympics aren't available where they are watching video:Only 46 percent of teens surveyed by Harris Interactive showed any interest in watching the Olympics.Last week, we noted some of the barriers that face people wanting to follow the Olympics online:
Why won't they watch? According to Harris, it's "Because it's not convenient for them.""Teens want quick-hitting videos," says Bill Carter, a partner at youth marketing agency Fuse Marketing. "They don't want the lead-up and they don't want the analysis. They just want the video."
These restrictions may limit teens more than others, because:
- The Olympics and its partners are restricting what you can watch online, because they'd rather have you watch it on broadcast television.
- The Olympics and its partners restrict where you can watch, limiting viewing based on geography.
- The Olympics and its partners restrict how you can watch - NBC, for example, forces you to install Microsoft's Silverlight before you can view videos.
- The Olympics has banned podcasting, video podcasting and other forms of citizen media from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
If teens really are skipping the Olympics because it's not available where they spend their time, this could force major changes to how future games are covered online.
- teens are heavy YouTube users, and YouTube users watch less TV;
- teens are leading the way in abandoning broadcast television; and
- when teens do watch regular television, they are paying less attention because they are multitasking.
Along those lines...
"I was taught when I was a young reporter that it's news when we say it is. I think that's still true -- it's news when 'we' say it is. It's just who 'we' is has changed"
David Carr (b. 1956), US Journalist. CNN "Reliable Sources", Sunday, August 10, 2008.
I was at a party last week with mostly asian people; a lot of my family’s friends are immigrant Chinese.
I went down in the basement to find my son, and what I found there was interesting.
The usual half-dozen young (first through fourth grade) boys were playing a video game together.
But in the next room, I found three or four older kids (12, 13, and 14 years old). They were sitting on the floor. Each had his or her own laptop. They were all watching You Tube. Each was watching something different. Younger kids were flitting back and forth, looking over the shoulders of the older kids, trying to find the most interesting thing to watch.
I was thinking “this is the future of the main stream media.”
... A return to the vigorous partisanship that was common in the American press in the 18th and early-19th centuries might make for some lively reading. If our papers fall into the wrong hands, however, the consequences for our democracy could be calamitous.Whoops. Too late Newsosaur. (These guys really ought to start reading FR.)
How Much Does It Cost to Buy Global TV News?
... You may not realize it, but if you watch any TV news broadcast on any station anywhere in the world, there is a better than even chance you will view pictures from APTN. BBC, Fox, Sky, CNN and every major broadcaster subscribes to and uses APTN pictures. While the method by which they operate is interesting, it is the extra service this US owned and UK based company offers to Arab states that is really interesting.
... the Arab Gulf States have asked for and receive a different and far more expensive service. ...
What this means is that while there are around 50 people producing news pictures for the whole world working in Camden at any time, there are a further 50 Arabic speaking staff producing finished stories exclusively for the Arab states of the gulf. This has a tremendous effect on the whole feel of the building as these two teams feed pictures and people back and forth and sit in adjacent work areas. The slant of the stories required by the Gulf States has a definite effect on which footage is used and discarded. This affects both the Gulf newsroom and the main global newsroom. ...
Huge mistake by NBC. In fact, NBC should have created a YouTube portal specifically for the Olympics and streamed it live.
I think by the time of the 2010 Winter Olympics, enough people will be on 120-plus channel digital cable systems and 150-plus channel satellite TV that NBC could run a 12 to 14-channel simulcast of all events live over cable and satellite TV, all in 1080i HD, and NBC may offer similar online.
Maybe they should put a tasteful black border around the print edition of Editor & Publisher.
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