News no longer US newspaper's forte

19 Jan 2009

US research centre has sobering insight into the role of newspapers in disseminating news. Concomitant with a trend by consumers to get their news from online sources, newspaper advertising revenues are also falling. One report describes the outlook for newspaper advertising as ‘dismal'.

According to the Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press, the Internet has now surpassed all other media except television as an outlet for national and international news.

TV still the main source

Currently, 40% of the survey respondents say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers.

Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news.

For young people, however, the internet now rivals television as a main source of national and international news. Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).

The survey by the Pew Research Centre for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 3-7 among 1,489 adults, finds there has been little change in the individual TV news outlets that people rely on for national and international news:

23% of the public says they get most of their news from CNN
17% cite Fox News;
Smaller shares mention other cable and broadcast outlets

While the 2008 presidential campaign attracted high levels of public attention, the economy was the top story of the year in terms of news interest, according to Pew's Weekly News Interest Index. In late September, as the nation's financial crisis deepened, 70% said they were following news about the economy very closely. That ranks among the highest levels of news interest for any story in the past two decades.

And, from eMarketer, a recent report confirming that, without sugar-coating the issue, "the outlook for newspaper publishers in the US is dismal." eMarketer estimates that newspaper advertising revenues declined 16.4% in 2008 to $37.9 billion.

Carol Krol, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Newspapers in Crisis: Migrating Online, says "... newspaper revenues are falling more than in any other major medium... even... classified advertising is plummeting due to craigslist and other online alternatives."

The financial pressure on newspapers is enormous, says the report. Krol continues "... newspaper publishers are beefing up their Websites... "but online ad revenues, which offered a glimmer of hope, are now falling."

The Newspaper Association of America tracked two consecutive quarters of declining revenues for newspapers online for Q2 and Q3 of 2008, the first time that has occurred since it began tracking online figures in 2003.

For 2008, eMarketer estimates online newspaper ad revenues declined by 0.4% overall compared with 2007, to $3.2 billion, and forecasts they will drop further into negative territory in 2009, down 4.7% to $3 billion.

The "State of the News Media 2008" report describes the dilemma as a decoupling of news and advertising: "... the emerging reality is that advertising isn't migrating online with the consumer... new business models beyond advertising may be required," says Krol.

Find additional information about the PEW report here. Learn more from the eMarketer article here.

Article courtesy of MediaPost.