If we needed credible and documentable proof the digitally-driven changes in our business, look no further than a Pew Research report released right before the holidays which shows that the internet has overtaken newspapers as the main source of news (40% to 35%) in 2008. Television is still king (70%), but when you look at age breakdowns, the king may not have long for the throne. For younger Americans (18-29), 59% say they get most of their national and international news online, an identical percentage cites television (numbers don’t add up to 100% because respondents could choose more than one response category). Even more striking is the change over time. In September 2007, TWICE as many young people said they relied mostly on TV for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).
What the study doesn’t tell us is what online outlets make up this “new majority.” It could very well be that “online” includes reading nytimes.com or washingtonpost.com, or looking at cnn.com or foxnews.com. But it certainly has huge implications for the hard-copy newspaper business, which has not had anything positive to report about its own business model in quite a few years. And it has implications for our business as well. When clients want “impactful” stories, they are going to have to accept that “above the fold” is becoming a more and more archaic description of a successful placement.
In addition, where (physically) a story appears is going to matter less, but driving stories that are searchable and enticing will matter more. With a hard-copy newspaper, a front-page placement or and upper-right-corner placement on an inside page matters because even if a reader isn’t looking for your story, they can still be drawn to it. Online browsing is much more targeted to a readers’ interests, which will put the additional onus of “search engine optimization” on any materials that a communicator releases.
Traditional newspapers aren’t dead yet, but we may have just heard the beginning gongs of their death knell.
