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Can Social Media Save the News?

There’s a “new” news consumer today, according to a new study from the Pew Research Center released this week.  And the Internet and mobile technologies are at the center of it all, helping people’s relationship with the news become more “portable, personalized, and participatory.”

• Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.

• Personalized: 28% of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.

• Participatory: 37% of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

According to the study, the rise of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience for consumers, where they use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess, and react to news.

This is good news indeed.  Let’s face it, the mainstream news business, battered particularly hard by the recession, needs all the life-saving it can find to stay afloat and relevant to consumers today. And while that’s clearly not new news, it’s important not to lose sight of the broader story told by the broader trends.

And those trends tell us that the list of shows that thrive on broadcast television—particularly ones that discuss current events, politics, news and lifestyle— is short and getting shorter. The audience is declining for the Evening News.  It’s declining for the morning news.  No one is immune it seems.  Not even the queen of daytime herself, Oprah.  The trend for her show, and media empire, is down from where it was, unfathomable a few short years ago.

One of the few bright spots isn’t “real news” at all.  It’s the hilariously “fake” news of Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” on cable and his even more radical brethren Steven Colbert of “The Colbert Report.”  Ratings fueled by the loyal Colbert Nation are doing just fine. Even more surprising is that studies have found that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report—the news that’s fake mind you—have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs out of any show’s audience, news included!  So obviously something more than just laughs is going on here.

But it’s the exception.  Polls, circulation stats and Nielsen ratings show, beyond a doubt, that people under 40 are following current events less than their parents.  Eighteen to 24-year-olds may be digital natives but research shows that just 11 percent use the Internet to learn about current events. Research also shows that people under 40 know less and care less about politics.

This generational divide is part of what’s wreaking havoc on the newsprint business. Average weekday circulation at 379 of the top U.S. newspapers fell 10.6% during the six months ending in September of last year—the steepest decline ever documented.

Similarly, the percentage of Americans who consider themselves regular magazine readers has shown a slow, steady decline over the past two decades. Pew has also found that 23% of adult Americans in 2008 said they read a magazine of some kind the day before — a drop of nearly a third from 33% in 1994.  When asked specifically about news magazines, 12% reported reading one “regularly,” down 2 percentage points from 2006 and down 6 percentage points from a similar survey in 1994.

Together with the deep recession, these trends have led to a total of 15,000+ journalists getting laid off or taking buyouts in the U.S. alone last year.  This means less journalists covering more beats, wearing more “hats.”  A sobering reality for PR people everywhere, as there are far fewer journalists to write and pages to carry your story today in these old standby news vehicles.   But there’s also good news.  Niche publications have held up pretty well, with most though not all posting gains in a tough year last year.  Same is true with some cable channels, the profit workhorses for many a media network today.

While the traditional news spigot runs drier, and Americans’ relationship with news changes, there’s a veritable fire hose of opportunity happening online.  We’ve all heard the stats but they remain no less amazing.  More video was uploaded to YouTube in the past 2 months than if ABC, NBC and CBS had been airing new content 24/7/365 since 1948 (which was when ABC started broadcasting).  Twitter eclipsed The New York Times in unique monthly visitors in 2009.  250 Million unique visitors go to YouTube, Facebook and MySpace every month collectively (sites which did not exist 6 years ago), compared to the 10 Million unique visitors ABC, NBC, CBS get every month collectively.  These kinds of stats could be cited all day long…

Of course, these are exactly the kind of trends that are disrupting the mainstream media model in the first place. But even so, any good news about how Americans are consuming news these days is welcome. Will news organizations truly adapt to and take advantage of them in time?  Can they?

Image credit: Flickr