Report: More people get news from Web than newspapers

by David Silverberg

A comprehensive report from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism found more Americans learned about the news from online surfing than from newspapers in 2010. The State of the News Media annual report added, “The internet now trails only television among American adults as a destination for news, and the trend line shows the gap closing.”

In December 2010 the report found 46 percent of people surveyed said they get news online at least three times a week, eclipsing newspapers (40 percent) for the first time. Cable and local news, magazines and newspapers saw a sharp decline in their audience numbers, while radio’s stats remained stable.

Countering this troubling trend is some sunny economic news. Ad spending bounced back for every sector but newspapers. The report said “online advertising overall grew 13.9% to $25.8 billion in 2010, according to data from eMarketer.” It went on to say, “When the final tally is in, online ad revenue in 2010 is projected to surpass print newspaper ad revenue for the first time. The problem for news is that by far the largest share of that online ad revenue goes to non-news sources, particularly to aggregators.”

Other key findings include figures on news investments. The report estimates job losses in the U.S. newspaper industry of about 1,100 to 1,500 people, or 3 to 4 percent of the workforce. “By recent standards, that is an improvement, although it leaves the largest newsrooms in the most American cities bruised and necessarily less ambitious than they were a decade ago,” the report writes.

The report applauded how, in 2010, some important new media institutions began to develop original newsgathering in a trailblazing way. Yahoo added several dozen reporters across news, sports and finance and AOL hired 900 journalists, 500 of them at its local Patch news operation, although it had to let go 200 people from the content team after the merger with the Huffington Post.

The State of the Media report also touched on paying for news. Around three dozen newspapers erected some kind of pay wall and only 1 percent of those outlets’ readers opted to pay for articles. A Pew survey suggests that “under certain circumstances the prospects for charging for content could improve. If their local newspaper would otherwise perish, 23% of Americans said they would pay $5 a month for an online version.” Also, the report believes certain niche news site featuring financial news – such as Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal – are successful at charging for news but the model wouldn’t be replicable for general news sites.