New report measures combined newpaper and online reach in the top 25 U.S. markets.
Scarborough Research is making available a free report that measures the combined (they call it ‘integrated’) effective reach 25 top newspapers are making with their print and online operations. The brief on the research.
Young consumers want their news differently and they want to share it, mash it up and personalize it
OK, so Scarborough doesn’t use those words but it is common for young, media savvy users to interact with digital media. It is a profoundly different experience. TV producers are demonstrating their understanding of this relationship with their audience; Exhibit A recently has been the Stephen Colbert TV show giving their video clips to user to remix and post on YouTube. There was also the Wikipedia incident.
These techniques started underground with people making and remaking the media they are interested in for just their circle of friends and now the techniques are becoming mainstream. Some of us 40-ish print/online guys understand how the youth use media and we get it.
Back to Scarborough and the report to see if top newspaper execs get it, too. The white paper includes interviews with four top media companies.
Download the white paper.
According to Hyde Post, the Vice President for the Internet at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the four key online audience drivers are:
- Urgency
- Utility
- Visual energy
- Community interactivity
I would be inclined to add: “5. Satisfaction” and I would probably place number four in the first position based on my experiences building Visual Editors, but he has the right idea. Utility is not the same as having a satisfying experience with media. Satisfaction is what drives habits and that’s where the value of great editing and interface design payoff.
The bright spot is that newspapers are reaching younger news consumers with their digital offerings. Digital delivery and services are the hot growth areas are for newspapers - particularly because of the young eyeballs digital news attracts and the opportunities to strengthen a newspaper’s brand as a bedrock of reliable information in their minds.
Newspaper website audiences are educated, affluent and young, dispelling a common misperception that young people are not engaged by newspaper content.
— Scarborough Research
Online is one thing - mobile penetration remains the holy grail for U.S. newspapers.
Many of the young media consumers I survey say they are more likely to touch digital news first though a mobile RSS newsreader running on a smartphone (Treo or a Blackberry) or whatever hot new portable they be using next to text, chat and IM with each other. Cheap video delivery and sharing tools on their mobile can help cement the relationship young people will have with their news habits.
Some newspaper groups are starting to see the future and news execs are finding that there is a lot of work remaining to not only understand the challenges but to find a new nimbleness to be able to redesign their operations to embrace these techniques and the rapidly-evolving future culture of networked journalism.
Recent headlines confirm this as well:
- Traffic to user video sites skyrocketing Consumers clearly view video as one of the most accessible, interesting and entertaining sources of content on the Web.”
- User-Generated Content Drives Half of U.S. Top 10 Fastest Growing Web sites “User-generated content sites have seen significant growth over the past year . . they also benefit from their cost-effectiveness: The content is practically free.”
- 13 things newspapers must adopt if they want to survive Connecting with people takes more than slapping a blog or a cheesy flash video player on your way-too-cluttered Web site.
- The Era of Networked Journalism Begins Amatuers and pros converge on big stories. Newspaper journalism Web innovations are more likely to come from outside the established players.
- Internet traffic soars for newspapers - up 30 percent in quarter While print newspaper readership declines, traffic to newspapers’ web sites continues to grow at a brisk pace.
What do you make of all this?
