Grim reading for Pew's state of the media report

Pew's annual state of the media report was released yesterday and once again for followers of media statistics it doesn't make particularly good reading.

For the economics of the media industry 2009 has once again seen some quite astounding figures

1.In newspapers, ad revenue (for print and online combined) fell 26 per cent a rate of decline that was more than 50 per cent steeper than a year earlier.

and more worryingly

2.Online, advertising during the year declined for the first time since 2002, according to data from eMarketer. The firm’s updated August projections called for online ad spending to fall 4.6 per cent to $22.4 billion.

As for paywalls

The findings suggest there is a difficult hill to climb in putting content behind a pay wall. Most people graze the Web for news rather than rely on primary sources. Only about a third (35%) can even identify a favorite news website. And of those that do, only 19%3 said they would continue to visit if that site put up a pay wall.

and for those in the industry

Newspaper staffs continued to shrink in 2009. We estimate that by year’s end 5,900 more full-time newsroom jobs were lost,

As the report says,the worry now is two fold.How much of the lost revenues can be clawed back as the economy starts to recover from the recession and secondly what are the prospects for the alternative journalism projects that are springing up?

How mobile is changing America

A new study out from Pew this morning suggests that Americans want their news portable personalized and participatory.

According to the report

The internet is at the center of the story of how people’s relationship to news is changing. Six in ten Americans (59 per cent) get news from a combination of online and offline sources on a typical day, and the internet is now the third most popular news platform, behind local television news and national television news.

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

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

In terms of 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.

Is blogging now uncool

Did you see that new Pew study that came out yesterday? asks Nick Carr

It put a big fat exclamation point on what a lot of us have come to realize recently: blogging is now the uncoolest thing you can do on the Internet. It's even uncooler than editing Wikipedia articles or having a Second Life avatar. In 2006, 28% of teens were blogging. Now, just three years later, the percentage has tumbled to 14%. Among twentysomethings, the percentage who write blogs has fallen from 24% to 15%. Writing comments on blogs is also down sharply among the young. It's only geezers - those over 30 - who are doing more blogging than they used to.Is

Well sometimes it's good to be uncool

Ht-Andrew Sullivan

Is digital increasing our networks and decreasing isolation

The latest report from Pew sheds some new light on the problems of social isolation and the digital age.

The original report in 2006 showed that Americans were

more socially isolated, the size of their discussion networks has declined, and the diversity of those people with whom they discuss important matters has decreased.

and that new technologies, such as the internet and mobile phone, may play a role in advancing this trend.

Wind forward three years and the situation is rather different

Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People’s use of the mobile phone and the internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And, when we examine people’s full personal network – their strong and weak ties – internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks.

Latest Pew-less than a third of Americans think news organisations get the facts straight

The latest Pew report is out and it makes grim reading for the American media.

It has found that the public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades.

According to the report

Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate

Also the report finds that only about a quarter say that news organizations are careful that their reporting is not politically biased, compared with 60% who say news organizations are politically biased.

And the percentages saying that news organizations are independent of powerful people and organizations (20%) or are willing to admit their mistakes (21%) now also match all-time lows.

Small steps in the net and civic engagement

Pew have just published a report on the internet and civic engagement in America.

What has it found? You may or may not be surprised

the internet is not changing the fundamental socio-economic character of civic engagement in America. When it comes to online activities such as contributing money, contacting a government official or signing an online petition, the wealthy and well-educated continue to lead the way.

There are hints that the net may be developing new forms of civic engagement.

The report found that

Some 19% of internet users have posted material online about political or social issues or used a social networking site for some form of civic or political engagement. And this group of activists is disproportionately young.

No doubt social media will play a greater role in this but the barriers are changing oh too slowly

Wireless devices are bridging the racial internet gap

A Pew report suggests that at least in America,there may be a racial divide over the types of devices used to access the internet.

Whilst

56% of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means, such as using a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player. The most prevalent way people get online using a wireless network is with a laptop computer; 39% of adults have done this.

But interestingly

African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet – and their use of it is also growing the fastest. This means the digital divide between African Americans and white Americans diminishes when mobile use is taken into account.

Stripped down further

1.48% of Africans Americans have at one time used their mobile device to access the internet for information, emailing, or instant-messaging, half again the national average of 32%.

2. 29% of African Americans use the internet on their handheld on an average day, also about half again the national average of 19%.

3,Compared with 2007, when 12% of African Americans used the internet on their mobile on the average day, use of the mobile internet is up by 141%.

Pew report on the coverage of Jackson's death

More research on the coverage of news comes from the Pew Institute which has looked at the media coverage of Michael Jackson's death in America.

The study concluded that

The public closely tracked the sudden death of pop superstar Michael Jackson last week, though nearly two-in-three Americans say news organizations gave too much coverage to the story. At the same time, half say the media struck the right balance between reporting on Jackson’s musical legacy and the problems in his personal life.

In terms of the time given over to the story

About two-thirds of the public (64%) said news organizations gave too much attention to the death of the 50-year-old performer,. About three-in-ten (29%) say the coverage was the right amount. Only 3% say there had been too little coverage.

Death of journalism is overstated as are micropayments-Pew

Yesterday saw the publication of the Project for Excellence in Journalism's sixth annual report into the state of the media.

You can read the key findings HERE

However the report says that

Two developments converged in the last year to shorten the time that journalism has left to reinvent its business model and secure its financial future,

Whilst audience migration to the web continues to accelerate the report says that the focus is all wrong on the business models required to support this trend.

However the report continues the death of traditional journalism is being overstated.

I was particually interested in its analysis of the various business models.The report is quite adamant that

the debate over new economic models, especially for newspapers, has largely focused on the wrong things. That debate has focused on micro-payments for content and non-profit ownership models, when other potentially more promising options have gone less examined.

Instead they suggest three areas that could be considered

1. Adopt the cable model, in which a fee to news producers is built into monthly Internet access fees consumers already pay. News industry executives have not seriously tested this enough to know if it could work, but these fees provide half the revenue in cable.

2. Build major online retail malls within news sites. This could both create a local search network for small businesses and link them directly with consumers to complete transactions, not just offer advertising—with the news operation getting a point-of-purchase fee.

3. Develop subscription-based niche products for elite professional audiences. These are more than subject-specific micro-sites.

The Internet takes over from newspapers as the source for news

That is according to the Pew report which says that apart from televison,the net is our vmain source of news

Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). Television continues to be cited most frequently as a main source for national and international news, at 70%.

says the report

For youngsters it may be even higher

Nearly six-in-ten Americans younger than 30 (59%) say they get most of their national and international news online; an identical percentage cites television. In September 2007, twice as many young people said they relied mostly on television for news than mentioned the internet (68% vs. 34%).