New “Newsroom” Players
While traditional newsrooms have shrunk, however, there are other new players producing content; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
While traditional newsrooms have shrunk, however, there are other new players producing content; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
Social media news is getting into the traditional media narrative more easily and more often; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
Everyone has become more adept at using digital technology and social media to distribute news; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
31% of readers have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the accustomed news; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
The news industry is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep, or question; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
In local TV sports, weather and traffic now account on average for 40% of the content produced; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
Newsrooms (USA) are below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks put the industry down 30% since its peak in 2000; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
The erosion of news reporting converges with chances to take messages directly to the public; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
PEJ: State of the News Media 2013 – Digital rises (+7.2%), Local TV loses (-6.5%) its audience; http://eicker.at/NewsMedia2013
PEJ: “In 2012, a continued erosion of news reporting resources converged with growing opportunities for those in politics, government agencies, companies and others to take their messages directly to the public. – Signs of the shrinking reporting power are documented throughout this year’s report. Estimates for newspaper newsroom cutbacks in 2012 put the industry down 30% since its peak in 2000 and below 40,000 full-time professional employees for the first time since 1978. In local TV, our special content report reveals, sports, weather and traffic now account on average for 40% of the content produced on the newscasts studied while story lengths shrink. … This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to. – At the same time, newsmakers and others with information they want to put into the public arena have become more adept at using digital technology and social media to do so on their own, without any filter by the traditional media. They are also seeing more success in getting their message into the traditional media narrative. – So far, this trend has emerged most clearly in the political sphere, particularly with the biggest story of 2012—the presidential election. A Pew Research Center analysis revealed that campaign reporters were acting primarily as megaphones, rather than as investigators, of the assertions put forward by the candidates and other political partisans. … While traditional newsrooms have shrunk, however, there are other new players producing content that could advance citizens’ knowledge about public issues. They are covering subject areas that would have once been covered more regularly and deeply by beat reporters at traditional news outlets—areas such as health, science and education. … Looking across these chapters, we identify six major trends of the year: 1. The effects of a decade of newsroom cutbacks are real – and the public is taking notice. … 2. The news industry continues to lose out on the bulk of new digital advertising. … 3. The long-dormant sponsorship ad category is seeing sharp growth. … 4. The growth of paid digital content experiments may have a significant impact on both news revenue and content. … 5. While the first and hardest-hit industry, newspapers, remains in the spotlight, local TV finds itself newly vulnerable. … 6. Hearing about things in the news from friends and family, whether via social media or actual word of mouth, leads to deeper news consumption.”
PEJ: “Digital News Consumption: The clearest pattern of news audience growth in 2012 came on digital platforms, and the proliferation of digital devices in peoples’ lives seemed to be a big part of the reason. In 2012, total traffic to the top 25 news sites increased 7.2%, according to comScore. And according to Pew Research data, 39% of respondents got news online or from a mobile device ‘yesterday,’ up from 34% in 2010, when the survey was last conducted. … Overall digital advertising grew 17% in 2012 to $37.3 billion, according to eMarketer. Digital advertising makes up around 23% of the total U.S. advertising market, up from 20% in 2011. Display advertising (which is made up of banner ads, video, rich media and sponsorships), the main source of digital ad revenue for news, grew 22% to $15 billion in 2012. While display is still the second-largest type of digital advertising, behind search, eMarketer projects that by 2016 display will outpace search. The majority of that digital revenue was scooped up by the powerful stakeholders in the digital arena—companies such as Google and Facebook. … The fortunes of some legacy media sectors changed direction somewhat in 2012. The network TV audience gains of a year before seemed to be ephemeral. And local TV ratings saw a steep decline after a stable 2011. Newspapers, on the other hand, managed to stem their circulation losses. … After years of decline, total daily circulation in 2012 stayed even with 2011, falling only 0.2%, according to an estimate by Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute. Much of this is tied to new digital pay plans, with the number of newspapers implementing them now up to 450, more than double a year ago. Sunday circulation rose 0.6% thanks to more generous audience accounting rules and an industry-wide marketing emphasis on growing Sunday print, the best-read and most profitable paper of the week. … Financially, the two legacy print platforms—newspapers and magazines—continued to see revenue declines in 2012, while gains in television mask longer-term challenges. And digital experienced weaker gains than in 2011.”
PEJ: “For more than a decade, as the desktop/laptop era of computing took hold, news organizations were at a severe disadvantage competing against a raft of financially and technologically stronger tech companies. Now, the rapid advance of the mobile era threatens a whole new level of upheaval, as both the costs and technological challenges of keeping up in the swiftly evolving news ecosystem multiply. – If there is one fact that neatly sums up the predicament news organizations face, it is this: Google, long the dominant player in search ads, has now extended its lead to the rest of the digital advertising market. In 2012, it also became the largest player in display advertising and the nascent market of mobile ads. – If that were not enough, the search giant has also become an inescapable player in mobile devices. Tablets based on Google’s Android operating system accounted for 41% of global tablets shipped in the third quarter of 2012, according to market researcher Strategy Analytics – a sharp shift from the same period two years earlier, when Android tablets made up less than one percent of the market. … Online news consumption rose sharply the last two years, following the rapid spread of digital platforms. In fact, online was the only category of news that showed growth in Pew Research Center’s 2012 News Media Consumption survey. In 2012, about 39% of respondents got news online or from a mobile device “yesterday,” (the day before they participated in the survey) up from 34% in 2010, when the survey was last conducted. And when other online and digital news sources are included, the share of people who got news from one or more digital forms on an average day rises to 50%, just below the audience for television news… The rapid growth of mobile is a key factor driving the move to digital news. Indeed, the proliferation of devices is giving rise to a new multiplatform news consumer, one who accesses news through a combination of different devices and traditional sources. … All of those factors are driving enormous growth in the online news audience. The top 25 news sites in the U.S. totaled 624 million unique monthly visitors in 2012 – a 7.2% gain from the prior year, according to comScore. … Yahoo News, which remained No. 1 on all three lists, saw a substantial increase in traffic, due in part to a content partnership with ABC News. The HuffingtonPost, which also saw strong audience growth, rose from fourth to second on the Hitwise list; it remained stable at third place in the comScore rankings. By contrast, The New York Times fell three spots on both lists, dropping to seventh place in the comScore ranking and 12th on Hitwise. … In 2012, social media continued to expand its role in the news ecosystem, establishing itself as an indispensable tool for distributing content and attracting new readers, as well as for building deeper engagement with current ones. … Audiences now consume more news through social media than they did before. A June 2012 Pew Research Center study found that 19% of Americans saw news or news headlines on a social network ‘yesterday,’ more than double the 9% who’d done so in 2010. The acceleration is not just among the young. Roughly 34% of those aged 18 to 24 said they saw news on a social networking site yesterday, up from 12% in 2010, and so did 30% of 30-to-39-year olds, up from 19% in 2010. … As readers and advertisers dive headlong into the mobile era, the outlook for news companies remains difficult. For much of the past 15 years, news organizations have been forced to trade print dollars for digital dimes, as revenues from print and television evaporated far faster than digital revenues have grown. Now, things may get even worse: News may be entering the era of mobile pennies. … The problem for news is not the size of the digital ad market, which is growing far more rapidly than the rest of the advertising market. Total digital advertising (including mobile) rose to $37.3 billion in 2012, a 17% increase. … Digital ads, which outpaced newspaper advertising for the first time in 2011, now make up 23% of overall U.S. advertising, up from 20% in 2011. They are second only to television ads in terms of overall dollars, and are growing three times faster. eMarketer projects digital’s share of the U.S. ad market will grow to 29% by 2016.“