New Studies Detail Loss of News Reader Connection
Important Details: Two recent news studies and an impromptu revenue-oriented conference happening this week all point to deepening stress on the news press.
How much would people miss their community daily newspapers? According to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, fewer than half of Americans (43%) say that losing their local newspaper would hurt civic life in their community “a lot.” Only a third (33%) would personally miss reading the local newspaper a lot if it were no longer available.
Of course, it’s those who regularly get local news from newspapers who see the link between local news and civic life. 56% of regular newspaper readers say that if the local newspaper they read most often was no longer published — either in print or online — civic life would significantly suffer. Just over half (55%) say they would personally miss reading the paper a lot if it were no longer available. That means 45% say…not so much.
Not surprisingly, the results vary directly by age. A majority of over-65-year-olds say they would both miss dailies and worry about civic impact. Of 18-39-year-olds, only 23% say they would miss the paper a lot and 41% say a closure would hurt civic life.
Why so little concern? As Pew Research Center President Andrew Kohut puts it, “They believe television produces a lot of the crucial reporting in their local communities.”
On Monday, Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism issued its sixth annual report. No surprise, the report was its most dire, with the 180,000-word online tome offering now-familiar trends:
- US newspaper advertising revenue has dropped about 23% in the last two years;
- The online ad inventory glut has greatly reduced rates and stifled online revenue growth;
- Margins have dropped to 11% or lower, and are insufficient for many companies to both meet operating needs and debt obligations.
In addition, the report discusses pay models’ workability and the great impact instant coverage (think cable punditry) is having on the newspaper industry. In all, it’s an encyclopedic resource on media — newspapers, broadcast and cable — and the multiple challenges they face.
On 21 March 2009 in Washington, D.C., representatives from WashingtonPost.com, NYtimes.com, Gannett, Scripps, PBS’ News Hour and others will come together for a day focused on a single issue: new revenue models. RevenueTwoPointZero aims to rapidly discuss and prototype models in a single day, to jump-start industry innovation. Says Alan Jacobson, one of the day’s organizers: “We reject the belief that media companies should pursue models based on pay-for-content plans or philanthropy….Instead, we believe the best hope for media companies to make money is the old-fashioned way – by earning it from advertising.” Top three priorities for the day:
- Build an advertising model for news content delivered on smart phones, such as Apple’s iPhone.
- Create a better Craigslist.
- Show newspaper-centric companies how they can better meet the advertising needs of small- and medium-sized businesses.
Implications: It’s connect-the-dots time for news media across the Western world. Even in the face of a rapid cutback of local news coverage, readers don’t see what’s happening. There is significantly less that readers of the local press know today than they knew three years ago, given fewer reporters and fewer published stories. Not surprisingly, though, readers can’t know what they don’t know. It’s a puzzle that even well-meaning initiatives like the poorly named Newspaper Project can’t solve with simple PR.
Outsell knows the answers aren’t easy ones here. It’s not all that surprising that smaller-than-we-would-like percentages understand the personal and societal value of news. We also see that in communities that lose dailies — like the Rocky in Denver and this week, the Post-Intelligencer in Seattle — loyal readers aren’t given a way to “save the paper,” or save the reporting. These once-profitable newspapers fall into loss. Before you know it — before readers are given any way to support them — they are gone.
First, the “second” newspapers are going, but we’re seeing “first” newspapers getting smaller — smaller in staff, size, reporting and influence — daily.
Amid the ashes, we echo louder calls for leadership in the news industry. Innovation — including what may be a bold online-only venture in Seattle — isn’t a luxury. It’s a necessity. Outsell’s recent Information Industry Outlook 2009 offers the telling title, good for all publishers, and absolutely prescriptive for news publishers: “No Guts, No Glory.”