Friday, January 21, 2005 1:26 PM
Journalism.org, a joint effort of of the
Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists, has released its
State of the News Media 2004 report. Looking at one part of the report, that
focused on newspapers, offers some telling findings. After years of slight increases in the raw number of subscribers, the trend lines are moving south as newspaper readership continues to decline. Worse, the reality of the previous increases in subscribers seems to have been as much the result of increasing population, rather than an increase in the population's desire to read a newspaper. If you look at the statistics capturing "U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation vs. Number of Households," which shows the percentage of the population that actually subscribes to a newsaper, the trend line is more than slightly downward.
There are always multiple angles from which one can read statistics, but some of the statistics really jump out of the page. Here is one: "In 1950, 123 percent of households bought a newspaper (in other words there were 1.23 papers sold per household.) By 1990, only 67 percent of households bought a newspaper. By 2000, it was 53 percent." Moreover, among people age 18 to 34, the readership percentage is the lowest of any age group (by far) and trending downwards, suggesting younger readers are getting their news elsewhere and not developing the "print" habit.
Negative trend lines don't signal a death knell for print newspapers; in fact, many newspapers continue to be profitable ventures with solid advertising revenue. Indeed, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) seems to beg to differ on some of the above reports findings, offering its own set of findings, while asserting that "[n]ewspapers remain one of the most relied-upon mediums for news and information, and continue to innovate and expand the ways in which they reach consumers."
Yet, the NAA also notes that "[i]n addition to the traditional printed product, newspapers are delivering content through various channels including the Internet, mobile devices and niche publications." To me, the key part of that statement is "delivering content through various channels." It points to the reality that even for financially healthy newspapers, delivering digital content is becoming a must-do, not a nice-to-have. Especially because, in many cases, digital content may be the only way to reach the continually fragmenting marketplace of niches. And, this is where the line between the traditional print media and the new concept of media that weblogs offer becomes more hazy. Is a daily newspaper columnist whose column is also posted to the web (and in turn syndicated and aggregated into other websites like Google News) a blogger? Is a blogger who posts commentary on a blog, which is then syndicated and aggregated widely across the web, a daily columnist?
In this haze, startup companies like Weblogs, Inc. are trying to define their own media channels. Weblogs Inc. partners with a wide range of topic and industry specific weblog authors and is trying to weave them together. Can you start an online-only "newspaper" today solely using weblog columnists and/or reporters to create your content? To me, it doesn't seem that far-fetched.
So, while traditional print media continues to battle for readership, while at the same time morphing away from actually being traditional print media, it seems clear the opportunity that a fragmenting readership offers to enterprising weblogs (and blawgs of course) and weblog content companies has never been more apparent.