State of the news media online 2008
March 17, 2008 · Share This · 1 Comment
The audience for online news is growing, but news sites are not growing in advertising revenue as quickly as other types of Websites, according to the annual State of the News Media report.
Lots of good analysis in the Online section and elsewhere, including:
- A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations. Now they must move toward also being stops along the way, gateways to other places, and a means to drill deeper, all ideas that connect to service rather than product. “The walled garden is over,” the editor of one of the most popular news sites in the country told us. A site restricted to its own content takes on the character of a cul de sac street with yellow “No Outlet” sign, reducing its value to the user. “Search has become the predominant … paradigm,” an influential market research report circulating throughout the industry reads. That means every page of a Web site — even one containing a single story — is its own front page. And each piece of content competes on its own with all other information on that topic linked to by blogs, “digged” by user news sites, sent in e-mails, or appearing in searches. As much as half of every Web page, designers advise, should be devoted to helping people find what they want on the rest of the site or the Web. That change is already occurring. A year ago, our study of news Web sites found that only three of 24 major Web sites from traditional news organizations offered links to outside content. Eleven of those sites now offer them. Some of this may simply be automated, which may be a service of limited value.
- The prospects for user-created content, once thought possibly central to the next era of journalism, for now appear more limited, even among “citizen” sites and blogs. News people report the most promising parts of citizen input currently are new ideas, sources, comments and to some extent pictures and video. But citizens posting news content has proven less valuable, with too little that is new or verifiable. (It may thrive at smaller outlets with fewer resources.) And the skepticism is not restricted to the traditional mainstream media or “MSM.” The array of citizen-produced news and blog sites is reaching a meaningful level. But a study of citizen media contained in this report finds most of these sites do not let outsiders do more than comment on the site’s own material, the same as most traditional news sites. Few allow the posting of news, information, community events or even letters to the editors. And blog sites are even more restricted. In short, rather than rejecting the “gatekeeper” role of traditional journalism, for now citizen journalists and bloggers appear for now to be recreating it in other places.
- The Web is becoming a more integral part of people’s lives. Eight in 10 Americans 17 and older now say the Internet is a critical source of information — up from 66% in 2006. According to the same survey, more Americans identified the Internet as a more important source of information than television (68%), radio (63%) and newspapers (63%).
- In 2007, the evidence suggests online access through mobile phones was still a niche activity. … As of March 2007, the latest period for which data are available, more than 60% of U.S. broadband users owned an Internet-enabled mobile device, but just 5% reported using the Internet there, according to research conducted by Media-Screen, a research firm.
- More media sites are taking the reader away from the “walled garden” – their own content – linking to once-taboo outside sources or even inviting in third-party content, allowing hunting-and-gathering consumers to act more directly on their preferences rather than being led to them.
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