For anyone who’s seriously interested in newspapers and who wants to adjust the volume of alarmist invective against the industry, here’s some recommended reading: the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s “State of the News Media 2007.”
Released on March 12, the study’s findings help clarify perceptions of the industry that I hear frequently from readers who believe that newspapers are on the verge of collapse.
It’s true that these are difficult days for publicly owned newspaper companies, most of which are cutting staff and reducing other costs to overcome losses in readership (off nationally by 20 percent since 1992, PEJ says) and to find revenue gains that will impress Wall Street.
It’s true that newspapers are contending with many forces, including developments in cyberspace, from which rains a steady bombardment of Internet-generated competitors — and opportunities.
Nevertheless, there’s strength in the business’s editorial heart and reach, and there are plenty of news-hungry readers, says the PEJ, a self-described nonpolitical, nonpartisan research institute that’s part of the Pew Research Center in Washington.
It’s helpful to look at some of the findings from one part of the research: a random sample last fall of 1,004 adults. (The margin of error was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.)
First, a key measure to check involves journalism’s most important vital sign: credibility — or, as PEJ’s report put it in a more straightforward term, believability.
Although other scholarly findings dispute the contention that newspapers’ credibility is in the tank because people still tend to believe what they read, PEJ found: “Overall, local daily newspapers sat on the lower end of the scale among media on believability, lower than CNN, Fox News, NPR and local television, and above only The Associated Press.
“In 2006 190f people said they believed all or most of what they read in their daily paper, down 10 points in eight years. (Another 400elieved a good deal of what they read in the paper, though less than ‘most’).”
(The Star-Telegram, incidentally, is blessed with high marks for credibility, scoring 65 percent reader satisfaction in a 2005 readership study.)
Is there a saving grace for the industry? Perhaps.
There was one dominant group in the survey: news junkies, “people who ‘enjoy keeping up with the news.’ Roughly two-thirds of them chose newspapers first. Network news was a distant second (less than half). And news junkies are a large group … (52 percent of the people surveyed).
“Here may be the logical base for the newspaper’s future — people who are particularly attuned to the world around them. And online, newspapers theoretically may be able to increase their share of that group.”
So what’s drawing news junkies and other readers to newspapers? A classic focus of journalism — coverage of local government — pulls 49 percent of the readers, PEJ found.
Culture/arts pulls 29 percent, followed by crime (23 percent), business (22 percent), international news (15 percent), political (15 percent), entertainment (14 percent), sports (13 percent) and weather (7 percent).
When asked, “What things in the newspaper are most interesting to you?,” regular readers cited local news (a top priority in the Star-Telegram’s work).
“More than a third (35%), cited the local/metro/state section, which included obituaries, gossip and scandal,” PEJ found.
I’ve long believed that readership erosion has been tied to American culture’s increasingly secularized abandonment of substance in politics and personal interests, creating a boring newscape that people feel helpless to change. And people are too busy to waste time on boring news. The PEJ report seemed to agree in part:
“People who really love the news still prefer newspapers by a large margin. … For newspapers to thrive on the Internet, Americans have to continue enjoying the news.
“There are limits to how far journalists can change their product to make news compelling, and going too far in the direction of entertainment may actually weaken the appeal of what newspapers provide.
“Society needs to produce citizens who find the outside world worth following if newspapers, or their online versions, are to flourish.”
It makes sense that the state of the news media is tied inexorably to the state of society. And if newspapers are a reflection of society, one must wonder about the America that’s sketched not on the papers’ news pages but in their ledgers.
ONLINE: www.stateofthemedia.org/2007/
about_the_study.asp?media=11
