The Mercury News reports, in fairly stuffy tones, on research that establishes once again that the paper itself won’t be quite the same thing before too long:
By a 2–1 ratio, Americans say they would rather watch an old-fashioned TV evening news report’s coverage of an event than the sort of “citizen video” that has become increasingly popular. […]
But the poll shows a generational divide emerging: One out of four younger Americans (ages 25 to 34) would prefer the video over conventional news coverage.
Republicans and Democrats by a 7–3 ratio would prefer an evening news report, while independents were slightly more willing to choose a citizen video.
By starting with the 2:1 ratio, the lead suggests some sort of victory for the mainstream, but also begs the question, ‘what about the other third?’ You’ll notice that the figures don’t really add up, too. Two-thirds of Americans would prefer a traditional broadcast, yet the generational divide shows that a quarter of youtube-savvy younger people prefer online video? Seventy percent of supporters of the mainstream parties prefer a mainstream report — thirty percent of those prefer what, then?
We’re missing the key statistic. What proportion of Americans would rather use online citizen-sourced media for their news?
There’s a whole lot of blurred lines here, of course. There are citizen videos on mainstream news sites. There are mainstream videos on Web 2.0 sites like YouTube. Blogs comment on newspapers; newspapers run their own blogs and source stories through the blogosphere. The logistics of such research are horrendous. If you get your tech news from digg, for example, you aren’t really eschewing mainstream media since most stories link back to mainstream sources at some point. But then again, you are because you aren’t using USA Today or similar as your portal. This isn’t some sort of competition, of course, but even these vague results show that the blur between mainstream professional journalist and dilettante enthusiast no longer really has any meaning.
Share this post:
The paper itself is in hard times. Really the star of northern cal, it may be one of the first to go under as a daily paper.
Personally I prefer “news” from established media (CNN, NYTimes, etc.) but I’ll take “opinion” on a social media website (blog, podcast, digg) any day. In my mind these two items are completely separate.
If a newspaper would just figure out what it wants to focus on (solid reporting and gathering news) — and put it all on the web they would be fine. The real thing that is dying is the “paper” — the inconvenience of the distribution method. The news is still in demand. Just give it to me in a format I want it in.
Webomatica — you’re right, the two are very different. But more and more newspapers are deciding to outsource newsgathering to AP and Reuters for almost anything, it seems.
Obviously, only AP and Reuters can win that game given that their news feeds are free.