E-Media Tidbits

people-press.org The Pew report shows that more youth are going "newsless" -- or are they? What if "news" has become so blended with their ambient environment they don't need to seek it out separately?

On Aug 17 the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a meaty report exploring this issue: Audience Segments in a Changing News Environment. The full report is 129 pages, and it's well worth reading. More than any other report I've seen lately, I think this one can help you get a handle on what kinds of news will be required to suit people's evolving needs and options -- especially as the core audience of many mainstream news orgs continues to age and shrink.

I'll be highlighting nuggets from this report over the next week as I continue to plow through it. But to start, here are some points to consider:

• Youth are less interested in news. "In spite of the increasing variety of ways to get the news, the proportion of young people getting no news on a typical day has increased substantially over the past decade. About a third of those younger than 25 (34 percent) say they get no news on a typical day -- up from 25 percent in 1998." My question on this point: What exactly are they considering "news" here? Only packaged, professional stories or headlines obtained directly from news outlets? News travels in many ways, including socially. I'd love to see research exploring the impact of alternate vectors. I suspect they're increasingly important, especially to the under-25 crowd.
• Search engines: a growing news gateway. "[Across all Web news consumers] 83 percent say they use search engines to find stories of interest -- about the same as in 2006. But a growing percentage is using search engines more frequently. Nearly a third of online news users (31%) deploy search engines to look for news stories at least three days a week, up from 24 percent two years ago and 19 percent in 2004."
• News "grazers" now the norm. "A slim majority of Americans now say they check in on the news from time to time during the day, rather than get the news at regular times. This marks the first time since the question was first asked in 2002 that most Americans consider themselves 'news grazers'."
• Incidental news encounters. "Overall, 73 percent of all online users say they come across news online when they have been on the Web for another purpose. This is largely unchanged from 2006 (76%), but a decade ago far fewer people inadvertently got news online (54 percent in 1998)."
• Mobile news growth. "Overall, 15 percent of Americans say they have a smart phone, such as an iPhone or Blackberry. More than a third of smart phone owners (37 percent) say they get news from these devices."