Newsroom Research Round Up
March 4, 2009
Research compiled by Clyde Bentley
It was not an auspicious February. This may be remembered as the year the newspaper groundhog peeked out of his hole for hints of spring -- only to be flattened by a bulldozer.
The media news was dominated by closings, bankruptcies and warnings of Armageddon. But true to form, media researchers went back to the numbers to both make sense of the present and speculate on the future.
Put it into perspective - Media seer John Morton has a knack for quickly cutting through hyperbole. Like most number crunchers, he sees tough times ahead for advertising-supported media, predicting in Media Life that 2009 likely will be worse than 2008.
But Morton also set the tone for an Advertising Age analysis, “It's Not Newspapers in Peril; It's Their Owners.”
"Not a lot of papers are operating at a loss. There are roughly 1,400 daily newspapers. We only hear about the top markets. That leaves at least 1,300 papers out there."
In fact, he said, publicly owned newspapers turned a 10.8% profit for the first three quarters of 2008. But the companies that owned those newspapers are swimming in red ink. Sort of. The week before closing the Rocky Mountain News, E.W. Scripps reported its newspaper earnings were down 16.5% -- but it still earned $12.9 million in the 2008 fourth quarter.
The experts polled by Advertising Age noted that the big losses reported by media companies were primarily due to debt service and one-time write-offs on the value of properties. Excluding those, for instance, Gannett newspapers produced an 18% profit.
Online, Your Way – Whether the financial numbers are overstated or not, it is clear the newspaper industry has big troubles. The annual survey of the press by The Bivings Group (TBG) showed the industry is increasingly faces that challenge by turning to online, but giving the Web a personal twist.
The report said publication of user-generated content is rapidly becoming a norm among newspapers, which is gratifying to those of us at the University of Missouri who put the country’s second citizen journalism site online in 2004.
Bivings said 58% of papers now allow user-generated photos, though only 18% took videos and 15% published articles. But even if readers cannot author articles, they can comment upon them at 75% of newspapers -- more than double last year. Use of social networking tools also doubled, but only to 10%. And three-quarters of the papers now have some sort of “most popular” tool on their Web sites.
Local.com - Local news remains the bright spot on the media horizon, including for online. David Westphal canvassed local-oriented news sites for Online Journalism Review and found them to be weathering the recession much better than metro newspapers. Readership continues to grow as do advertising sales. But again, that is relative. Westphal found that most local sites supported small staffs and heard rumors of burnout. But Tracy Record of the West Seattle Blog shrugged that off: “You have to look at it like any small business. You kill yourself trying to get it off the ground. Stop whining about that.”
Not e-mail, but good – Nielsen Online’s February statistics show news as the No. 3 most popular genre among U.S. Internet users, with an 8% share. E-mail was first with 34% followed by search and portals, 16%. Many Web watchers say those numbers leave out a significant albeit less socially palatable portion of the Web. Pornography reportedly takes up about 12% of Web use.
We don’t like you – A hard look at the numbers may put newspapers in a somewhat better light, but the We Media/Zogby Poll released last week says the folks who run the papers have little credibility. The nationwide online survey showed 71% of respondents were "not very" or "not at all" satisfied with the leadership of traditional news media. The good news is that the 74% were dissatisfied with government leaders and a whopping 81% were dissatisfied with big business leadership.
The poll also showed that Americans overwhelmingly (46%) went to online for breaking news, but only compared it to “daily news” for the other media. I’ve asked for better statistics.
The Other Twits – Some of those unhappy folks are chatting about us moment by moment, again and again. Twitter, the mini-blogging system that incorporates cell phone SMS and Web communications, is now used by about 11% of American adults according to new Pew Internet and American Life statistics. Not surprisingly, sending messages 140 characters at a time is a youthful pastime enjoyed by 19% of online 18-24-year-olds and 20% of online 25-34-year-olds.
Only 4% of online geezers like me Tweet. RU crazy? Just @ me at http://twitter.com/mizzoubentley or RT this column. (Translation: “He needs a life.”)
The World is Calling – We may Twitter like crazy but Americans are falling behind the world in our use of cell phones. A survey released this week by the UN’s International Telecommunication Union showed the United States slipped six points to No. 17 in use of cell phone technology. Sweden topped the list – the country has more mobiles than Swedes. Korea was second and Denmark third.
More than half the adults in the world -- 60% -- now carry cell phones. The rise is driven largely by booming use in poor Third-World countries. Cell phone penetration is up to 82% in the U.S. About 20% of those are smartphones. Nearly half the smartphones in the U.S. are like President Obama’s – Blackberries. iPhones account for 22%. Apple’s seemingly ubiquitous iPhone tallies 1.1% of cell phones worldwide but two-thirds of all mobile Web browsing is done from iPhones.
It’s Your Nickel – The International Telecommunication Union report also produced a surprise on the financial side of the cell phone phenomenon. The organization has a new of cellular/Web/fixed phone costs called the Information and Communications Technology Breadbasket. It uses an index formula to ranks countries by purchasing power and technology costs.
The winner is Singapore, but in United States is second. That means the call you place here is close to the most affordable in the world. That may be news if you have looked at your family’s digital spending lately.
Everything on Everything – If all that leaves you confused, fear not. The man with Theories of Everything has turned his attention to the media. Australia’s Dave Tow has a new essay on “The Future of the Media – Human and Web Synthesis.”
Despite the daunting title, futurist Tow takes readers on a fairly logical trek to 2050. He starts with the premise that the economic turmoil of 2009 will cause major changes in the structure of the media industry. That will include the use of unpaid bloggers and citizen journalists to cut costs and also a major trend toward local online reporting.
But very soon, he predicts, “Traditional news media, both local and global, will be rapidly reduced to a stream of headlines with minimal analysis.”
Here's Tow's countdown:
- Broadcast television dies by 2020, along with much of the cable industry. Web TV reigns.
- By 2030, all news will be handled automatically by 24/7 Web feeds operated independent of human intervention. The U.S. will lose domination of the Web.
- Traditional advertising dies by 2040. Consumer assessment and semantic networks will drive commerce.
- When 2050 dawns, traditional major media organizations will be extinct. A multitude of small players powered by the decision-making capacity of Web 5.0 will generate new forms of knowledge and immersive entertainment.
And by 2060 my IRAs may recover enough that I can retire.
Contact Me:
E-mail - bentleycl@missouri.edu Twitter: http://twitter.com/MizzouBentley