Tonight I came across this post over at J-Log, which talks about the newspaper habits of younger people - or, more specifically, lack of newspaper reading habits. What bothers me most about this is the ignorance of how the younger set has embraced the Internet as a channel to receive news and information.
Individuals aren’t reading the newspaper’s content less, they’re just getting less ink on their fingers. Until someone starts utilizing the demographics harnessed by sites like nj.com and parent advance.net, studies like this will not be relevant, in my opinion. You can’t just sit there and make a blanket statement about readership being down, circ is down, newspapers are dying, blah blah blah. Yes, print readership is down. Yes, circulation has dropped significantly over the last 10-14 years. But it’s not like people have gained a stupidity level or something. If anything, I would venture to say that people are more informed than they were before. Not only the Internet as a whole, but sites like Google News and Topix make news from everywhere available to everyone. Blogs filter content for readers, and readers match themselves up with blogs they like. More and more people have obtained subscriber based television services like cable and satellite. Audio and Visual content has replaced a lot of print content for many people. While the loss of newspapers as the medium that provided so much news to so many people for so many years may seem harsh, it is reality in a sense. I don’t think you’ll see them going out of business or stopping all printing processes in the near future, but the declines will continue.
Australia’s Daily Telegraph has an article by Christine Pouget that talks about where the newspaper industry stands from those present at the 57th annual World Newspaper Congress. The overall gist is that while circulation is declining for paid publications, advertising revenue is up. This could be for any number of factors, including some publications going out of business, causing a much more tight selection of outlets for people to read. Or, that the folks “still” reading the newspaper at this point can be more highly targeted by those wanting to advertise. The point is, companies are advertising and publications still exist. Most folks still like to have a little bit of print in their hands at some point - so don’t expect your children to never hold a newspaper in their lifetimes.
