Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Petteri Sulonen, via Flickr (CC license) Some problems are pretty hard to ignore if you want to move forward.

Yesterday at a Knight Digital Media Center seminar, prof. Michael Williams (Univ. Md.) presented a room full of print editorial writers with a wake-up call. According to new research from Zogby International, print and broadcast news are on the way out, fast. Newspapers and TV news are becoming the refuge of a dying (and thus shrinking) demographic -- and hence, not a good long-term bet for a business model.

Here are the data*:

"Nearly half of respondents (48 percent) said their primary source of news and information is the Internet, an increase from 40 percent who said the same a year ago. Younger adults were most likely to name the Internet as their top source -- 55 percent of those age 18 to 29 say they get most of their news and information online, compared to 35 percent of those age 65 and older.

"These oldest adults are the only age group to favor a primary news source other than the Internet, with 38 percent of these seniors who said they get most of their news from television. Overall, 29 percent said television is their main source of news, while fewer said they turn to radio (11 percent) and newspapers (10 percent) for most of their news and information. Just seven percent of those age 18 to 29 said they get most of their news from newspapers, while more than twice as many (17 percent) of those age 65 and older list newspapers as their top source of news and information."

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Williams presented this data first thing in the morning to make a point: News orgs and pros who continue to consider their print or broadcast products of primary importance are missing the boat and may well find themselves out of business. To survive and thrive, it's crucial to shift organizational and professional priorities.

This means putting online and mobile publication first, to consider it the primary deliverable, and to restructure business models to support that. Doing this effectively also means learning to value conversation over publication -- not just to engage communities, but to be more engaged in our communities.

There was dead silence in the room when Williams presented those Zogby numbers. I wouldn't say the editorial writers were shocked, exactly, but this news seemed to make several of them uncomfortable. Williams then challenged the group to imagine that the print side of their business was going away and that from now on they only had to focus on online and mobile. During the day, several participants really seemed to be embracing that in a positive way. I wish I could have stayed for today and tomorrow, to see how that turns out -- but there is a seminar blog covering the developments.

Incidentally, I was surprised to see that on Feb. 28 Poynter's Jim Romensko highlighted the Zogby survey under this headline: Americans are a bit more satisfied with journalism these days. Romensko focused on a point made near the bottom of Zogby's release: "Although the vast majority of Americans are dissatisfied with the quality of journalism (64 percent), overall satisfaction with journalism has increased to 35 percent in this survey from 27 percent who said the same in 2007."

...Hmmm, seems to me that spinning this survey that way is a bit like saying, "Well, my car wouldn't start yesterday. Today I got it to start, briefly! That's an improvement! But I still couldn't get it into gear. Bummer that I'm stalled on the railroad crossing. Hey, is that a train whistle?..."

* NOTE: According to the methodology note, this was an online survey, so it was inherently skewed toward regular Internet users. Also, it did not cover mobile news channels -- but I suspect including mobile would only strongly amplify the trend away from print and broadcast indicated by this survey.

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