The Modern Journalist

Newspapers v. the Web: 2 Choices, 1 Answer

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Of the 23 percent who got news on the internet yesterday, only a minority visited newspaper websites. Instead, websites that include quick updates of major headlines, such as MSNBC, Yahoo, and CNN, dominate the web-news landscape.(July 20, 2006, The Pew Center for the People and the Press: Online Newspapers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership)

I’ve had a question rattling around in my cage for the last few days. Which would rather give up: Google, Travelocity (for travel and leisure), MovieFone (for movie and entertainment news) or your local newspaper?

What about Twitter v. your newspaper? Or Facebook?

Where is the line where you finally say — okay, I live without that application but I can’t live without my local paper.

It’s a broad question, as Chris Graves pointed out on The Modern Journalist social network — where I first posed this. Her response was to question whether it’s fair to compare sites like Google and Travelocity to the local paper, which I took to mean: do people use these for the same things, and if not, what does it matter which one you use for what.

The point is well taken, although I think her question misses a larger issue. The Pew Internet & American Life surveyed people in December 2007 to find out what they were doing online. 37 percent of all people — behind only “use the Internet” and “email” — was “get news”.

That should be a big boost to newspapers. The number one activity — that is the thing people do after checking their email — is read the news.

Yet less than 1 in 4 people actually go to a newspaper for that news.

Just behind that getting news, things start to get interesting. 29 percent of people look for something related to an interest or hobby, which one assumes means they are looking away from news sites for that information.

A bit further down the list is watching videos from Google or YouTube.

But one I found particularly interesting was getting news or information on politics. The language there is very important to pay attention. The survey results separated that topic out from the newspaper — and specifically made mention of information, the underlying assumption that we view information differently than we do news.

Four-in-ten Americans say they read a newspaper yesterday, with 6 percent reading a newspaper online 4 percent read both a print and online newspaper, while percent read it only online. In addition, 3 percent say they read something on a local or national newspaper website yesterday. (July 20, 2006, The Pew Center for the People and the Press: Online Newspapers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership)

When I worked at Technology Review, we made a concerted effort to view what we did on the Web completely separate from what we did in the magazine — although it was written by the same staff.

The reason: if you wanted the full experience, you would read all of our properties; however, if you didn’t, then it was up to you to chose the type of information that you wanted.

We weren’t concerned about cannibalizing our readers, we just viewed each medium as offering something different. I refused to let the Web play second-fiddle to the print product and the print folks refused to let their quality and style be compromised by an emerging medium.

Too often, news sites attempt to use the Web to re-create what they did on paper. They have trained their audience to look at the Web as a secondary information source, which makes it awfully hard to attract new readers.

More than 70 percent of U.S. adults where online by December 2007, a higher percentage than at any other time. (December 2007. Pew Internet & American Life: Percentage of U.S. Adults Online.)

And if they aren’t attracting new readers but Internet usage is increasing — what are all those people doing?

And the answer to that gets me to the premise of the question, which is that newspapers are competing with a global information economy that has very little in common with what they are doing.

When you look at the top 100 sites in the U.S., there are some news organizations — The New York Times, the BBC, CNN and Fox — but many of these sites (and every one in the top ten) are made up of specialities: search, shopping, auction and video).

The middle ten are even more interesting. Blogger is three sites above the first news organization and Word Press is one below the New York Times.

So the top ten sites are those that allow people to find, watch and buy things. The middle ten, which include some news organizations — also includes blogging and other publishing tools.

And for those who say that it’s impossible for a local paper to generate real page views to compete nationally, two things: that’s true because you made that decision years ago with the types of technologies and interactivity you abandoned; and that wouldn’t explain these sites such as Digg, QuizRocket, Ask, Imeem, CareerBuilder and Answers — not to mention every blogging, picture, video and other publishing platform (and publishing is what newspapers do, right)?

The top sites are littered with sites that allow people to answer their questions, find what they are looking for, make purchases or plan.

The few news sites are major media conglomerates — but DeviantArt, a very cool artist community, is nearly as popular.

So I end with a restatement of my question: which would you rather give up, you’re local newspaper or your favorite Web tool?