“Less than one of five Americans (17%) say radio is their most important medium for information and entertainment. That’s down from 26% in 2002. What’s changing is obvious – the Internet is quickly becoming a turn-to medium. One-third of Americans say it’s now the most important — compared to 36% who pick TV. A big jump from 2002 when just 20% said the Web. A new Edison Media Research report also shows the Internet and TV have swapped places as the “most cool and exciting” media with 38% now picking the Web versus 35% for TV. Edison’s report also finds newspapers are most-often picked as the “least essential” medium by 35% of consumers. It’s followed by the Internet with 24%. Both radio and TV had the fewest mentions at 18%.”– Inside Radio
Tag Archives: newspapers
Internet’s ad share surpasses radio for the first time
Internet’s ad share surpasses radio for the first time. Radio’s share of advertising revenues held flat in the first quarter — taking 6.6% of spending. But for the first time the Internet has a bigger share. It took 7.7%. TNS Media says radio is now fifth — behind TV, magazines, newspapers and the Web. [Inside Radio]
What happened to the news?
A scary little story in today’s USA Today about the findings of a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. According to Project Director Tom Rosenstiel,
“The dirty little secret of the information revolution is it has been more about repurposing or repackaging news than gathering it.”
In recent years, because of their own cutbacks, radio and television have increasingly been relying on newspapers and wire services to do their newsgathering for them.
If you think the news is thin on local radio and TV stations now, imagine what it would be if they didn’t have newspapers to rewrite. If,however, your local radio station long ago abandoned any pretense of news, you’ll be okay.
“Do what you do best. And you link to the rest.”
Reply
That’s what Jeff Jarvis calls “the new architecture of news” in an excellent post at Buzz Machine. He’s writing about newspapers but it applies to any news organization:
“They try to cover everything because they used to have to be all things to all people in their markets. So they had their own reporters replicate the work of other reporters elsewhere so they could say that they did it under their own bylines as a matter of pride and propriety. It’s the way things were done. They also took wire-service copy and reedited it so they could give their audiences the world. But in the age of the link, this is clearly inefficient and unnecessary. You can link to the stories that someone else did and to the rest of the world. And if you do that, it allows you to reallocate your dwindling resources to what matters, which in most cases should be local coverage.”
“Instead of saying, “we should have that” (and replicating what is already out there) you say, “what do we do best?” That is, “what is our unique value?” It means that when you sit down to see a story that others have worked on, you should ask, “can we do it better?” If not, then link. And devote your time to what you can do better.”
What do our news networks do “best?” Easy. We cover the legislature and state government in our respective states. Big newspapers do a great job on this beat but not much with audio. Yet. Some TV stations jump on a story if it has local appeal (and time allows). I still think we do the audio thing best. For now.
By chance or design, our websites have had this same focus. We’ve stayed close to what we do best.
I won’t get into pros and cons of our current network/affiliate business model. That’s too big an issue for this little blog. But it begs the question: Do enough people care about the legislature and state government to give us an audience that will be attractive to advertisers?
I should add that we still attempt to cover news from throughout the state. But it’s getting harder. At the same time, it’s getting easier to find out what’s going 500 miles away. But we are dependent on our affiliate radio stations to cover local stories of statewide significance. And many local radio stations have cut their news departments. As a statewide network, we are the sum of our affiliate parts.
I posted last month about one of our reporters killing a link (that I had added) to a “competing” news organization. Jarvis’ post is for him. If a news outlet was at a press conference that we couldn’t attend and posted a story, we can’t be afraid to link to them. Not if we’re serious about serving our listeners/readers. The fiction that “if they don’t know about it, it didn’t happen (yet)” doesn’t fly anymore. They know about it. And we should help them know about it. Whoever does that best wins. [Thanks, David]
Newspapers better at web video than TV (and radio?)
That’s the conclusion of Kurt Anderson in an article on the New York Magazine website. My first-read take-aways:
“The lessons seem obvious: Don’t do Web video if you don’t have anything interesting to show, and don’t compete with TV unless you can do something they can’t or won’t. In other words, use the medium.
The passionate, improvised, innovative reinventings, as opposed to the final, fully professionalized reinventions, are often the coolest moments in cultural history. Think of movies in 1920, TV in 1955, or public radio in 1980.”
A few years ago I was concerned that newspapers could so easily incorporate audio on their websites. It didn’t occur to me that they’d jump straight to video.
“NPR is not radio”
Jeff Jarvis, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Jay Rosen and some other New Media thought leaders have been invited to Washington to talk/think about the future of National Public Radio. Mr. Jarvis shares some of his notes going in and I found myself substituting the names of our radio networks for NPR.
“NPR is not radio. If I tell newspapers they have to stop thinking on paper, so I’ll argue that NPR must throw off the limits of its medium. And I don’t just mean that the can go multimedia, adding photos or videos to their sound. I mean changing the culture, not thinking like a radio network anymore so they can see the options the internet opens up to work in every appropriate medium with entirely new kinds of content, from TV to data bases. So change the name: It’s National Public Media, except that Doc will scold me that this is more than media. It’s National Public Whatsis.”
Some of his other ideas: NPR should be a network of networks and a training ground for great media. They should add to their mission finding and nurturing new talent and help local affiliates become hyperlocal.
I surely would love to sit in a corner and listen to these guys. But it appears they will be blogging all or parts of the conversations so I’ll follow it there.
Home delivery
On the drive home this evening, I got behind the guy that delivers newspapers. He was weaving a bit as he frantically stuffed The Daily Bugle into those pink newspaper condoms before throwing them into the bushes. As I watched, I had to wonder about the future of this job, not to mention the economics. I can’t believe the job pays much and by the time you buy gas, how can the math work out?
I also wondered if the guy is a web-head like me. Does he keep up with the challenges facing newspapers (or maybe they’re doing better than we think). Is he thinking –with every paper he flings: “Man, I gotta find another gig. This ain’t gonna last.”
He probably has more important things to worry about and is happy to have the job. And this Internet thing could just be a fad.
Time, Inc. developing video for web
Time Inc. is announcing today that it’s launching an in-house studio to help its 130 magazines develop videos for the Web. Along with that plan, it will unveil a deal to work with Brightcove, a leading provider of Internet video production, distribution and ad sales services.
We have some damned fine radio reporters working for our company. And most of them are just getting the hang of moving photos from their digital cameras to their computers.
Sounds like Time is making a significant investment. And a smart one. Not just handing out Canon Sure-Shots to their reporters as they head out the door.
US teachers using online news sites in classroom; newspapers left behind
LostRemote points to a survey of over 1,000 teachers that found that 57 percent use national or international news websites as a source of news for teaching purposes, compared to 28 percent for daily newspapers and just 13 percent for local TV news.
“Students do not relate to newspapers at all, any more than they would to vinyl records,” one teacher said in the study. Local papers “haven’t recognized how quickly this transition is taking place,” said the study’s author, Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. What about local TV sites? They weren’t even mentioned.
Uh, any mention of radio news?
Newspaper-TV partnerships strained by online video
Again from LostRemote: “An article in today’s Washington Post notes that the once-coveted cross-promotional and content-sharing partnerships between local newspapers and television stations are becoming increasingly strained in the new mediascape where web sites can easily roll their own video. The balance is somewhat one-sided: Newspapers are training their online producers to become videographers, but broadcasters face challenges when it comes to getting copy for their sites.”
This is readily apparent when you look at stories on TV station websites. Very thin. We feel some of this pressure on our sites, too. We’re writing for 3 minute newscasts. A single story written for broadcast can be just a few sentences. Doesn’t exactly fill up a web page.