EVA DOMÍNGUEZ - 07/12/2004 - 21.51 horas
There are more people reading the news than ever, be it in the printed media or on the Internet. The press audience is growing and people are increasingly turning to the Internet, rather than other media, to keep abreast of affairs. Times are good for the printed press… Or are they?
A
recent report by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) shows how for many Europeans the Internet has grown as a news medium. The Web accounts for 20% of total media consumption, ahead of newspapers (11%) and magazines (8%) but behind the radio (30%) and television (33%). Meanwhile, in Spain, press consumption is at its highest in recent years. The Estudio General de Medios
shows audience at a record 40%.
Going against the business model
All this, while it may be encouraging, is disheartening for the traditional press. The above figures show a definite trend that goes against one of the pillars of the business model that sustains papers as we have known them for so long, namely paying for news.
The growth in press audience is mainly due to the advent of free newspapers and the Internet audience is on the whole logging on to sites that can be accessed free of charge. ‘20 Minutos’ and ‘Metro’ have consolidated their positions as, respectively, the second and third most read papers in Spain.
For the young, the free press
Free papers, like the Internet, attract a younger audience than the pay press, with the young being a sector which those longest-established find slipping through their fingers at every fresh attempt to catch them. Many newspaper firms have that sector high on their list of strategic priorities, with one of the initiatives most widely used being the launch of free newspaper products specifically targeting the sector.
In the US, the Chicago Tribune's 'Red Eye' and the Washington Post's 'Express'; in the Netherlands, De Telegraaf's 'Spits'; in Spain, El Correo's 'El Nervión'; and, in Australia, the Herald Sun's 'MX' and just some of the examples. They are products designed for rapid consumption, in brief formats, both as regards their pagination and in the presentation of their news.
It may therefore be supposed that the young have more than enough with the dosage of news provided by the free press, designed to be read on public transport, and by what they consume on the Internet. They have no further interest in reading. They don't read much anyway. Theirs is an audiovisual culture.
The ideal paper
That may be the idea held by many journalists, but not by all. Perhaps it is the press that has not adapted to the young. The ideal paper, say young American journalists
surveyed by the Columbia Journalism Review, is neither the news model provided by the free press nor that of its traditional counterpart.
"Newspapers assume our generation wants nothing more than fluff, twenty-four-seven entertainment. That is flat-out wrong," says one of those interviewed, for whom the ideal paper would contain "more subversive analysis of pop culture".
The ideal paper would contain less data and more stories. "We should make stories about the Middle East so engaging, so novel-like that you can’t help but read them," says another. It would be as if the reader were participating in informal conversation, they add. Visually, it would be powerful, without making the mistake of thinking that the young are "unable to comprehend something if it isn't in full color with cute captions and screaming headlines".
Just the news?
Many millions of people around the world continue to buy a newspaper every day because they enjoy reading it. But is that only to read news they would also find in the free press or is it in order to understand the world the news is happening in better?
For the authors of the World Association of Newspaper's report
“Profiting from digital”, readers look to papers not so much for news as for the pleasure of reading about what is happening about them. Unless the paper itself unveils a story that becomes the news agenda for the rest of the media, newspapers are always last on the scene when it comes to the news.
"Generally, the most important news in our lives becomes important not at the time it occurs, but at the time we need to know it”, say the authors. For that reason, "newsrooms need to move from a culture of breaking news to making".
An audience for knowledge
One of the obstacles in the way of such a transition is that "newspapers have continued to embed themselves in traditional news values, rather than seeking to repurpose their extraordinary skills into providing content that is more relevant and valued though less 'worthy', in line with modern media consumers needs".
One sector of those modern media consumers is young, but there are others too. And all are looking for more than just the undiluted news they could obtain from other media. The time we spend on news has fallen. Having spent 20 minutes a day consuming media that is free, be it the press, television, the radio or the Internet, most of us have had our daily dose of news.
Longer spent reading is what the paid-for traditional press requires of its reader, more than just news is what the readers require of their papers. The report says that if newspapers know their audience they can provide not just breaking news but content that adds to it and that is useful to the reader. We are paying in order to understand and for that to happen the press first needs to understand its readers. But when it comes to the young, it doesn't seem to know them well enough.
