July 26, 2010
Research compiled by Clyde Bentley
Some of the most intriguing media research dwell less on what we do than on, simply, what we are.
Parenthetically speaking: Is the mass media as we know it just a passing anomaly? Perhaps, if you subscribe to The Gutenberg Parenthesis. This unnerving-but-plausible theory says that human knowledge was formed orally until Johannes Gutenberg came along with his printing press. Now, the print era is marked with a closed parenthesis as we use the Internet for "secondary orality" to create the ideas that move society along the timeline.
Tom Pettitt, an associate professor of English at the University of Southern Denmark, recently gave a fascinating explanation of the theory at Harvard that was captured on the Niemen Journalism Lab site. The implications for the news media are huge. If the Gutenberg Parenthesis holds water, then the decline of newspapers and other print media is simply an inevitable return to the natural order. That in turn, Petit said, means that many of the assumptions upon which the Forth Estate are built, no longer form a firm foundation:
"Print is no longer a guarantee of truth. And speech no longer undermines truth. And so newspapers, or the press, will need to find some other signals — it’s got to find a way though this."
Petit suggested that journalists take a look at how people sorted out the truth before print media made their relatively brief appearance in human history. When we depended upon the spoken word for communications, creating knowledge required sampling and remixing; borrowing and reshaping; appropriating and recontextualizing -- terms that Petitt's Harvard hosts say are reappearing in Web 2.0. I would argue that those tasks survived better in the daily miracle of newspapers better than elsewhere in the print world -- until the late 20th century. In our zeal to provide comment-free, purely observational and "professional" journalism, my generation of editors wandered so far from this pre-press norm that it is little wonder the digital revolution developed outside our ranks.
Does print = paper? The Gutenberg Parenthesis challenges the status of the written word, but it is increasingly hard to determine what is "print." For 123 million Americans, news(paper) is a routine "parenthetical" part of life. ComScore reported that 57% of the U.S. Internet audiences clicked to the digital versions of newspapers. ComScore said the "news" part of the name seems as popular as ever -- it is just being consumed across more media. Where Petit's argument held firm is in the ad count, where social networks topped the list.
That said, read monthly tallies such as this report with great care. Remember that they count the number of readers who came to a site at least once in an entire month, which is not comparable to daily circulation. Also, a truism in research is that the percentage on the positive side and the percentage on the negative side are equally important — so 34% of the Internet audience did not go to newspaper sites, social networks missed 72% of the ads, etc. That is often a better indicator of the targeting potential for a new audience.
The customer counts: Researchers of all stripes continue to remind us that the news business is indeed that, a business. And even in the marketplace of ideas, keeping your customers is the key to survival. American Express reported in its Global Customer Service Barometer that 61% of Americans say customer service is key to their contentment and that they will spend an average of 9% more when they believe a company provides good service. More than a quarter (28%) of the respondents also said that companies are paying less attention to good service. Consumers have blasted journalists for arrogance for years, but those of us who have served on the business side know that maintaining even a minimal reputation for customer service is a challenge in the newspaper industry. The logistics of mass daily delivery work against us, but it is our air of professional detachment that simply galls many readers. But as the American Express report demonstrates, seemingly small civilities at all levels of customer contact make a difference. We've all seen (and often been bewildered by) how a carrier's porch-throwing accuracy, a reporter's friendly tone of voice or a rep's honest concern for an advertiser's business will produce more public engagement than a six-part political analysis.
Responding to demand: To make matters worse, there is some evidence that computers are doing a better job heeding the desires of readers than are human journalists. Although there has been little academic research on the phenomenon, the incredible success of Demand Media and Associated Content has made a mockery of one of the most cherished "secret skills" of journalism: The news nose. These new "content farms" eschew human editors and instead turn to computer programs to create story assignments. They collect the current popular Web search terms, match them with the most advertiser-desired keywords, then churn them through algorithms that produce story lines that Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt discovered generate 4.9 times the revenue of stories assigned by human editors. Production costs are low: The story leads are posted on the Web and picked up by writers who get about $15 an article. My freelancing daughter found she could kick out five or six articles a day for Demand's e-How site. We used to call it "quick and dirty." She called it an auxiliary income.
I'm sure the academic researchers will be all over the content farm phenomenon this year, but in the meantime Mediashift this month produced an excellent package of stories and links that puts algorithm-driven content into a journalism perspective.
Follow the audience: What's a publisher to do when both technology and our own history seem against us? The smart money keeps an increasingly keen eye on audience characteristics. Last February Rupert Murdoch declared "content is not just king, it’s the emperor of all things electronic." But it only retains the crown if it is relevant. Short of depending on those algorithms, ensuring relevance depends on understanding the needs of the audience. It's always good to keep an ear out at the corner coffee shop, but here are some of the latest tips from researchers;
Remember the Boomers: While media companies have frantically searched for ways to reach the elusive 18-34-year-old audience, Nielsen Research recently warned that they should pay better attention to the the 78 million Baby Boomers in the U.S. Nielsen said that only 5% of advertising dollars are now targeted to Boomers and about half the demographic is ignored entirely. Americans born between 1946 and 1964 still represent the largest single group of consumers, make up a third of all TV viewers, are the most likely to have broadband access at home and dominate 94% of the 1,083 key categories of consumer goods.
Battle of brains: There is some truth to the old adage "It's all in your head." Dr. A.K. Pradeep, of NeuroFocus, Inc says that knowing the key differences in the ways demographic groups process information is critical to reaching them. Women, he wrote, have four times more neurons connecting the halves of their brains than men. That means they are more adept at combining both rational and emotional factors deciphering a message. The brains of 50-something Baby Boomers, on the other hand, are becoming less capable of screening out distractions and tend to overlook the "not" in negative statements. Pradeep's book Buying the Brain was summarized this week on Nielsenwire.
Look Mom, no wires: Our key audiences are not only migrating to the Internet, but they are going there in comfort. A Pew study showed 59% of American adults go online wirelessly -- either via Wi-Fi or cell phone. One implication of that is that they are now more likely to consume the Web in much the same relaxing way they do magazines and newspapers: kicking back in their favorite chair (with a laptop) or browsing the morning news at the breakfast table (with a smartphone). This could change the perception that the Web is best for fast-paced bits of urgent information people scan through at their desks.
Next month I should have a cornucopia of studies to report from the largest gathering of journalism researchers -- the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications annual conference in Denver. While the conference is a stellar way for journalism scholars to make collaborative connections, it also gives them a healthy dose of practical audience research. There is no tougher house to play than the one packed with your peers.
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E-mail - bentleycl@missouri.edu Twitter: http://twitter.com/MizzouBentley
