Newspapers are so 1990s. Seriously. According to new research by Pew, more Americans go online to get their news as opposed to using traditional sources like newspapers. Twenty-three percent of people in the U.S. said they had read a print publication the day before. And, only 29 percent reported reading a newspaper in any format. Ouch. No wonder newspapers are hurting. No one is reading them anymore. These days, people rely on the internet to get the latest weather and crime news.
It’s easy to understand why.
People Access The Internet More Than Ever
One of the big reasons people aren’t reading the print news anymore is that they get up-to-the-minute news reports online. When you can go to Fox News’s website, or CNN, you don’t need to wait for the paper to be printed and you’ll have immediate access to breaking news. You can also sit in front of your computer and scroll through Facebook. If you’ve got a good mix of liberal, conservative, and libertarian friends, you’ll get all the news you could ever want. The news will come to you, instead of you having to chase it down.
Beyond that, companies like Yahoo! and Google have made it stupidly simple to aggregate the news from all over the world. If you’re looking for diversity, there’s also The Drudge Report.
People Are More Enamored With Videos As Opposed To Following The News Through Traditional Sources
The study found that, surprisingly, many people just don’t watch the news at all. A full 60 percent of people under age 25 get their news from digital sources, but only 5 percent of all people under 30 follow the news about political figures and events in Washington very closely.
Among the top-ranked shows for young people are “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.”
What are people doing if they’re not watching the news? They’re on Facebook. They’re on Twitter. They’re watching videos on YouTube. They’re even downloading videos on YouTube. In fact, using converter websites like http://youtubedownload.altervista.org/ young people are downloading videos of their friends going bungee jumping, or race car driving, or whatever. That’s “news” to them. They could care less about who did what in Washington D.C.
Now, if you go this route, downloading videos, the only thing you need to remember is to respect IP.
Traditional News Followers Are Getting Older
The people who do watch the news are getting older. The study found that most of the people who do watch or follow the news closely are over age 65. With 73 percent of the population in this age range watching news on any given day, it’s no wonder they’re more informed than the 18-29 age group, of which only 34 percent watched the news yesterday.
And, it’s a trend. In 2006, 49 percent of the 18-29 year olds were watching the news. Today, it’s down to 34 percent. Likewise, the 65+ group saw an increase from 69 percent to 73 percent. So, more of the older folks are watching the news while fewer of the younger folks are.
People Hate Political Agendas
People, in general, say they don’t like news with a point of view. In other words, traditional outlets like Fox News and CNN don’t score highly among most people. They’d rather get their news from places that don’t have an overt agenda. Of those interviewed, 64 percent said they prefer getting political news from sources with no political point of view.
And, if you think about it, this makes perfect sense. Objectivity rules – especially on the web. People increasingly distrust mainstream media. A recent Gallup poll shows that only 23 percent of people trust it. Consider the case of the NSA spying on Americans. It’s easy to see why people would prefer crowdsourced news over politically-connected news organizations.
With the government spying on its own citizens, and new media outlets refusing to take an affirmative stand with Snowden, there’s a disconnect. And, many news organizations implicitly or explicitly support a political agenda. For example, it’s widely recognized that CNN is a more liberal-leaning station, while Fox News is overtly conservative.
There’s not much hiding the fact of the stations’ agendas, either. The proof is in the programming. And, as long as there’s the Drudge Report, Facebook, Reddit, and independent journalists, there will always be a strong market for objective news.
Stacy Rogers is an energetic journalism professor. When not lecturing or taking students to the field, he enjoys researching and writing about trends in news and journalistic methods.
