Wednesday, May 10, 2006

On May 8, Jupiter Research released a new report: The New Demographics of Online News Competing with Portals for Younger Audiences. I just spoke with lead analyst Barry Parr, who offered these highlights.

Portals have become the second-most-used news medium by young people, said Parr. Of course, "portals" can mean a lot of things. In this case, Jupiter's survey offered Google, Yahoo, and AOL as examples of portals (as opposed to sites belonging to individual news organizations, such as newspaper sites). In the 18-24 age group, 17 percent were using portals at least weekly to get news. This figure climbed to 20 percent for the 25-34 age group, and then dropped steadily for each older age group.

Parr noted that portal sites are the only online news channel whose usage increases for younger readers. He said that this is significant because it could represent a major shift in primary news preference -- and therefore in the competitive online landscape for news organizations.

Jupiter's online survey was conducted in September 2005. In all, 2991 invited participants responded, offering a balanced representation across age groups and projectable results, Parr said. "It's too soon to say whether younger news consumers will take this habit with them as they get older. But if they do, it will completely remake the way news is gathered, reported, and distributed," said Parr.

If today's younger news audience maintains its preference for portals over time, news organizations might benefit more in the future from strategies aimed at engaging visitors who arrive via portals at specific stories, rather than from the home page or section pages. "I think it'll help to make news sites more story-centered, with an emphasis on orienting visitors on every page and making it easy for them to explore your site further."

Parr also believes that local reporting will be the long-term strength for news organizations. "Online, papers just won't be able to compete with portals like Yahoo for national and international news." On the local news front, the competition from portals probably won't be strong -- but Parr thinks it's possible that citizen journalism may offer more competition on that front over time.

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