News Reading Changes Force Societal Shifts
Important Details: Three recent reports show the drama and depth of news reading change.
- According to the UK National Readership Survey, commissioned by the House of Lords, the number of UK adults reading at least one national daily newspaper has dropped by five million in the last 15 years, down to 21.7 million from 26.7 million in 1992. Fifteen years ago, almost six out of 10 UK adults (59%) read at least one or more national daily newspaper on an average day. That number is now down to 45%, or roughly a percentage point a year. The change is as striking and similar in percentage decline for Sunday newspapers. The overall number of people reading one or more national Sunday newspapers fell 21% and their reach fell 26% over the period. While some papers moved up — two dailies (the Daily Mail, the Times) and three Sunday papers (the Sunday Telegraph, Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday) — overall the trendlines were down for newspaper reading.The UK report largely parallels the experience of the US press over the same period. Not surprisingly, the report gauged the steepest decline as being among younger adults, 37% down among 15-24-year-olds, and 40% among 25-34-year-olds.
- If the the younger population’s readership of newspapers is down, then that may have real repercussions for civic life. According to “Lifelong Readers: Driving Civic Engagement,” a US Newspaper Association of America Foundation study, young people who use newspapers for schoolwork and read newspaper content as teens are more likely to volunteer, vote and engage in civic expression as adults. For instance, of those who had used newspapers as teenagers, 62% volunteered in their communities, as compared to 37% of those who had not. Additionally, for those donating money to non-profit causes, 74% of those who had used newspapers gave, while only 51% of the non-newspaper readers had.
- A new Pew Internet & American Life Project study points to another emerging difference among adults of all ages: 58% turned to the internet in approaching a problem or issue with a “potential connection to the government or government-provided information”. Those are issues, for instance, involving schools, taxes, business start-ups, registering to vote, local communities issues or obtaining military benefits. Significantly, the internet has become the #1 source, ahead of professionals (53%), friends and family (45%) or newspapers and magazines (36%).
Implications: It’s easy for the news industry to be pre-occupied with its own woes, as its business prospects see permanent adjustment. Less easy to concentrate on, and to grasp, is the impact that newspapers’ declining community impact is having on the communities they’ve long served. These surveys, though, provide pointers in that direction. As newspapers drop in household penetration below 50% of households — and as the internet replaces newspapers as the primary go-to source information source — the very definitions of community and community involvement are changing.
What our new communities will look like is an open question of course; far too early for anyone to guess at. One thing that is clear though is that what the web takes away, the web provides as well. Community and social networking sites are a phenomenon — think everything from MySpace and Facebook to “mom” and genealogical sites. The sense of social connection is palpable, yet uncertain in its depth and its longevity. News sites themselves are testing digital community, using platforms from companies like Pluck, Topix, thePort and others, to bring in community posts, photos, blogs and calendar items. These efforts are early ones, but they may be decisive in both creating a a new sense of modern community — and a new publishing business.