Adult online use for news growing

Jupiter Research (a provider of research about online, information technology and business)
The number of online adults who prefer the Internet as their main source of news has grown over 35 percent during a four-year period, at the expense of television and newspapers. Over 26 percent of online adults prefer the Internet for national and international news, compared to 19 percent in 2001. The percentage of online adults using the Internet for daily news had been flat – hovering around 50 percent – for the last few years. Preference for online local news is growing, but hasn't exceeded 10 percent among online adults. Young adults, ages 18 to 24, are helping drive the preference trend, especially in national news. Thirty-three percent of online young adults say they prefer the Internet as their primary source of news, while 40 percent prefer TV and 10 percent traditional newspapers.

 

Accept fact that news delivery is changing

Los Angeles Times
Analyst Harold L. Vogel says journalists need to realize that the news will be delivered by different means in the future – much as music and movies are migrating to online delivery. “This is the same thing that happened to other legacy industries like the steel mills and textile industry.”

 

Youth like online news over print media

Newsday
According to a college student: “Young people, like me, are used to things going fast because we were brought up in the technology age. Why sift through the entire newspaper when I can just go online and get it [a news story] in 30 seconds.”

 

Online newspaper audience size increases

Nielsen/NetRatings
A new report by Nielsen//NetRatings, conducted for the Newspaper Association of America, shows a 3.1-percent increase in the audience size for online newspapers in the last year. According to the report, 29 percent of American Internet users read an online newspaper in March 2005 – or about 44 million people. Besides the overall upward trend, the report cites an increase in page consumption – from 41.5 pages per person for the month of March 2004, to 47.9 pages in March 2005.

Another Nielsen/NetRatings study finds that 21 percent of Web users now primarily use online versions of newspapers, while 72 percent still read print editions. The remaining 7 percent split their time between online and offline editions.

 

Going against the weeklies – online

Cyberjournalist.net
The above site recently profiled Gordon Joseloff, a former CBS News and UPI foreign correspondent, who has used blogware to create an online news publication about his hometown of Westport , Connecticut . An affluent community of 26,000, Westport has weekly and semi-weekly printed newspapers, but no dailies covering it well. Its residents' high per-capita income means that a high percentage of their homes have computers with high-speed Internet access. Joseloff's effort, WestportNow, is an example of how a professional reporter working online can single-handledly compete against local weekly newspapers.

 

Another birthday celebration

Shetland News Agency
The United Kingdom's first online-only daily newspaper is about to celebrate its 10 th birthday. The Shetland News was launched in November 1995, and is now run by freelance news service, the Shetland News Agency, which supplies the national media with news from the Shetland Islands . The news site has grown significantly in popularity and today the Shetland News has developed into the main daily news source in Shetland and beyond with a daily readership of between 6,000 and 8,000 a day, which is a significant share of a population of 22,000.

- FTONEWS.com -