Message From Michael -- July 16, 2007

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS

TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM



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DISCLAIMER: This week’s edition of MfM is a little longer than usual, because there were three significant studies that came out and that I am going to attempt to summarize briefly. Which leads to disclaimer number two, they are so brief that they are subject to some distortion of interpretation.

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: And if you remember the line from the old Sam Cook song about teen love, you will remember that Sam also didn’t know much about biology, science, French and algebra. Well, now add to that – News. According to a survey by the Joan Shorenstein on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, teenagers and young adults are paying less attention to news than their counterparts of two or three decades ago. No news there, but the DEGREE OF DISCONNECT is news – not just newspapers, but national and local television, radio and the Internet. One out of four teens (28%) and one out of four young adults (24%) paid almost no attention to news, whatever the source. And another third of the teens (32%) and another quarter of the young adults (24%) paid little or no attention to three of the mediums and made only ‘moderate’ use of the fourth. Simply put, “daily news is not an integral part of the daily lives of most teens and young adults.” The survey showed that while teenagers and young adults may say they watch, read or listen to the news (because it is the ‘socially desirable response’), in actual fact they ‘skim’ the newspaper, watch TV for a ‘short while,’ listen to news on radio when it ‘happens to come on’ and read news on the Internet when they ‘come across’ it.

HARD NEWS VERSUS SOFT NEWS: The Shorenstein report also found that the difference in familiarity between hard news stories (such as the 400-point plunge in the Dow at the time) and soft news stories (such as Anna Nicole Smith’s death) was “nothing short of extraordinary.” Three out of four (75%) of the respondents OF ALL AGES knew about the typical soft news story while less than half (45%) knew about the typical hard news story. And two thirds (68%) correctly identified the factual elements of a soft news story while less than half again (45%) did so for the hard news story. A “puzzling finding”, according to the survey, was that while other research shows older adults are more likely to discuss public affairs, younger adults were three times more likely to say they had heard about a story from another person – although, in most cases it was a soft news story. The report did note that many hard news stories “have a numbing sameness – another act of Congress or another presidential speech – that can block them from memory even when they get heavy coverage.”

THE NEW MEDIA ROLE: Yes, the Internet is an important source for news for teenagers and young adults, according to the report. But it is a matter of degree. Two out of five teens (41%) and young adults (47%) say they became aware of a story through TV while only one in five (18%) say they became aware of a story through the Internet. Interestingly, one in four teenagers (28%) and one in ten young adults (12%) say they found out about a story through ‘another person.’ The report says Radio is actually the most “underrated news medium” because of its large “inadvertent news audience.”

THE NEW NEWS MATRIX. In the “old days,” there was a correlation between news interest and news consumption regardless of the medium, says the report. Mom and Dad read the morning newspaper at the breakfast table and would watch the evening news. By default the kids acquired a news habit of their own, almost because they had no choice. The report says this “forced feeding” of the news habit came to an end in the 1980’s with the spread of cable television. Now the big question mark is whether the Internet will make news consumption greater because of its 24/7 availability or break down news consumption even more because of that same on-demand feature. The problem, say the researchers, is that online news exposure is less fixed by time, place and routine – elements that have a ritual ability to reinforce news habits. Now news consumption becomes more ‘inadvertent.’ And even though young people may say they are interested in news, their behavior says otherwise. It may be a matter of different medium for different needs. Newspapers for public affairs coverage; Television for entertainment programs; the Internet for gaming and social interaction. The report authors say media use today is largely a solitary affair that only reinforces existing preferences and doesn’t create news ones, like news use. They quote Aristotle who wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.” The fact that young people don’t repeatedly ‘do news’ is “a basis for pessimism about the future of daily news and young adults.”

You can access the full report at: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/carnegie_knight/young_news_web.pdf

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS: Several recent reports cited a study by Edison Media Research that the Internet is close to beating television as “most essential” medium. In keeping with MfM’s focus on going behind the headlines, we can say -- WRONGO-GONGO. The Internet has beaten Television. At least, for people under the age of 44. Not only that, the Internet beats out television as the “most cool” and “exciting” medium for people under the age of 54 as well. Some consolation for my television brethren, on the flip side of the equation, more people (24%) deemed the Internet the “least essential” medium, compared to television (18%) and radio (18%). No consolation for my newspaper brethren, newspapers were deemed the “least essential” medium by more people (35%) than any other media. All this represents a fairly dramatic change from when the survey was taken five years ago in 2002.

Not surprisingly, the Internet beat out Television by a whopping 15 percentage points (46% to 31%) among the 12-17 crowd when it came to “most essential.” Somewhat surprisingly, the Internet also beat out Television by a substantial 12 percentage points (40% to 28%) among the 35-44 crowd in that arena. The race was much tighter among the 18-24 group (38% to 35%) and the 25-34 group (38% to 33%). It’s only when you get to the 45—plus crowd that Television beats out the Internet but by a mere 6 percentage points, but a substantial 16 percentage points in the 55-plus group and a whop-whopping 34% among the 65-plus.

And when it comes to being “most cool,” the figures for the Internet are even more staggering with the Internet beating Television by 20 percentage points in the 12-17 group; 19 percentage points in the 18-24’s; another 14 points in the 25-34; 17 points in the 35-44 group but a mere one point in the 45-54 group. Once you get to the 55-plus crowd (that Television doesn’t sell), Television beats out the Internet by 12 points and an incredible 35 points in the 65-plus crowd as “most cool.”

WHO’S STALE AND BORING: More consolation for my Television brethren, fewer people (24%) think Television is “stale and boring” in 2007 than thought so in 2002, when it was 36%. No consolation for my Newspaper brethren, more people (35%) now think they have become “stale and boring” than in 2002, when it was 30%. And for those radio readers of MfM, radio dropped 9 percentage points in terms of being “most essential,” increased 4 percentage points in being “least essential”; is flat over the five year period in terms of being “stale and boring”; but dropped dramatically in terms of being “used more.” The Internet (at 34%) beat radio (18%) and barely trailed Television (37%) when people were asked, “Are you using it more lately.”

THE KICKER: But here’s the kicker for you Television folks out there. When asked, “Who would you turn to first in the event of a major breaking news story,” Television dominates with 62% of the respondents picking TV, beating out the Internet (at 18%) by more than a three to one margin. The television figure is down from 2002 when it was 74% and the Internet is up from 2002 when it was a mere 8%. Radio is down, at 10% this year compared to 12% five years ago, and newspapers increased a tad, at 8% this year versus 6% five years ago.

(Okay, let me explain the headline. The Devil is in the Details can be translated a number of ways: you have to watch the details or they will trip you up; things are more difficult to accomplish because of the various details to be taken care of; or, the plan may appear simple but there is a lot of detail work to be done. The flip side of that is “God is in the Details” which some translate as meaning you can find big things in small packages, sort of along the line of ‘less is more’; or that whatever one does should be done thoroughly; details are important.)

You can access the full report at: http://www.edisonresearch.com/home/archives/Q3%20Media%20Perceptions%20-%20large%20slides%20_2_.pdf

TO BE JOURNALISM OR NOT TO BE JOURNALISM: A report by the University of Maryland’s J-Lab “Institute for Interactive Journalism” says four out of five “citizen media” websites consider what they do to be journalism and three out of four have pronounced their efforts a “success.” Of course, success has multiple definitions, including watch-dogging local government, providing news that couldn’t otherwise be had, helping their community to solve problems and nudging local media to improve. The Knight Citizen News Network (kcnn.org) has identified more than 450 “citizen media” sites in the United States. Both groups have adopted the term “citizen media” as their preferred definition of these sites, although both groups use the term interchangeably with “citizen journalism.” The J-Lab group identified several variations of the citizen media model – community cooperatives run by volunteers; trained citizen journalist sites using traditional journalism values and training to non-journalists; professional journalists who are operating for profit and not for profit sites; solo enterprise sites created by individuals, few of whom have journalism training; blog aggregators which act as one-stop community repositories; and legacy media sites launched by newspapers or broadcasters as places where the users dominate the content, as opposed to their own websites where journalists dominate the work. The report cites examples of each, and they run the gamut from people like Jonathon Weber, former editor of The Industry Standard (at newwest.net); former Boston Globe editor and now M-I-T Media Lab editor-in-residence Jack Driscoll (ryereflections.org); to “life and business partners” Christopher Grotke and Lise LePage who run a web design business in Brattleboro, Vermont (ibrattleboro.com)

J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer says her group believes citizen media sites “will become an enduring part of the emerging newscape” and urges legacy media groups to partner and support such sites instead of trying to compete with them. The report says ‘old media’ companies have launched such sites for a variety of reasons – to offset loss of editorial staff, to build community and thereby interest in local news coverage, and, candidly, to preserve or maybe expand market share among consumers and advertisers. Meanwhile, many ‘new media’ companies are struggling to harness citizen and advertising contributions to create profitable online revenue models. In short, both are looking for the right ‘business model.’ As a foot note, one of the larger, multiple citizen media sites, backfence.com, has gone out of business since the J-Lab report was issued.

You can access the full report at: http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/ and even have a hard copy sent to you.

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