The Young Choose the Internet for Information, Television for Entertainment and Newspapers For …Well, Actually They Don’t Choose Newspapers Hardly At All

Philip M. Stone November 8, 2004

The latest US market data makes for very sorry newspaper reading and helps explain why circulation numbers continue their downward spiral. Some 82% of young adults aged 18-24 choose the Internet or television as their primary information and entertainment provider.

According to the US Online Publishers Association (OPA), 73% of young adults say the Internet helps them keep up with topics they are interested in, while 65% says it gives them useful information about products and services. Isn’t that what newspapers are supposed to do?

In the Generational Media Study by Frank N. Magid Associates for the OPA, newspapers barely showed as a medium of choice for young or old (18 – 54). The Internet was the top media choice by 46% of all respondents, followed by television (35%), books (8%), with radio and newspapers tied at 3% each.

Narrowing the age group to 18-24 showed the Internet scored as first choice with 51% of respondents and another 31% said it was their second choice behind television.  

That news reinforces the results of newly released figures by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) which showed that two-thirds of those newspapers reporting has either declining or stagnant circulation   Among the big names showing decreases were the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. Big names that showed some increases included the New York Times and USA Today.

Several US newspaper chains including Belo, publisher of the Dallas Morning News, and Tribune Company, publisher of Newsday, are recovering from major scandals in their circulation departments which have resulted in the newspapers paying money back to advertisers, sharply lower revenues, and shareholder law suits. And if that wasn’t enough the federal government   has served subpoenas on New York newspapers, including the Times, investigating circulation practices. All newspapers say they are fully cooperating with the authorities.

Adding to marketing woes is the new “Do-Not-Call List ” in which the public can register not to receive unsolicited phone calls from vendors selling goods and services. Many newspapers relied on such telemarketing.

But all is not lost.  A study by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation (NAA) says that newspaper reading is basically a habit. And habits that are established early in life, particularly in the classroom,  are more likely to stay with an adult.

The NAA study showed that those young people who are exposed to newspapers in school remain regular readers thereafter.  It is no accident, therefore, that the NAA foundation, which represents more than 2,000 newspapers in the US and Canada, runs the Newspaper in Education program that delivers more than 220 million newspapers to American classrooms each year.

“If we can start younger – the middle school and high school level – in getting people to see the newspaper as that thing they really want to turn to for information, then they’re going to,” according to Jim Abbott, NAA Foundation vice president.

Even so, it is an uphill struggle. Twice as many young adults in the survey said television was their top choice for news and information, 21% said the Internet, and 20% picked newspapers.

Europeans also recognize that one way of stopping the slide of the youth market away from newspapers is to support readership with incentives. In France, for instance, the government is looking at such ploys as subsidizing two-month subscriptions on a youth’s 18th birthday and providing budgets to colleges to use newspapers as teaching tools. Via various practices the government already heavily subsidizes the French newspaper industry.

The true solution, of course, is to give their younger readers the news and information they want in the style they want it. The traditional printed newspaper may not be the ideal venue, but most newspapers have their own web sites. If the youth are going to the Internet for speed of news delivery and the information they find most appealing then newspapers need to make sure their web sites are in play.

Gives a whole new meaning to the word “convergence”.