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papers for the web
Mucho big headache, with no solutions in sight
By Marty Beard
In recent years the biggest threat newspapers faced from the internet seemed to be the loss of their lock on classified advertising.
That problem still persists but now a new one has come along and by comparison it is loads thornier.
It is the loss of twenty-somethings to the internet.
Among internet users in their twenties, the ritual of sitting down with the morning paper is gradually being displaced by a new routine: logging on for news.
People in the 20 to 29 age bracket are bypassing print newspapers for their online editions, according to a recent study from Forrester Research.
"There’s a new wave of consumers that are coming up the pike, and these consumers have been introduced to the web at a much younger age," says Christopher M. Kelley, the analyst behind the report.
The effect on the American newspaper threatens to be nothing less than devastating if the trend is not halted.
Those younger readers are not only valued in themselves, on the basis of sheer numbers, they represent a future core readership base that papers cannot afford to lose.
Just what newspapers will do or can do to head off this trend is unclear. No obvious remedies leap to mind.
"The evolution of the roles of off-line and online media is not nearly complete," Kelley says.
"They need to create a very clear multi-channel strategy to drive these younger consumers both online and off-line."
Fully 45 percent of wired twenty-somethings report having logged on to the web sites of their favorite print papers on a regular basis.
Less than 30 percent say they would rather read print newspapers or magazines than online newspapers or magazines.
Compared to older web users, wired twenty-somethings are 43 percent more likely to consider the internet to be the best place to get up-to-date information.
They’re also 24 percent more likely to consider the internet the best source of the most in-depth information.
Also, web-savvy people in their twenties are 75 percent more likely than older web users to prefer the internet as a source of information such as news and classified ads.
According to Kelley, one gets a good sense of how the internet is gradually encroaching upon print territory by looking at classifieds.
Overall, consumers still prefer the experience of sitting down and leafing through printed classified ads, but young, web-savvy users are more likely to look to personal-ad or job sites for such things.
But the younger readers' interest extends beyond classifieds, considerably beyond, and that's what has newspapers most worried.
Thirty-one percent of the under-30 online newspaper-reading set say that they’ve reduced their readership of print papers because they can get the same material online.
While more than 60 percent have not altered their consumption of print papers, Kelley observes that the trend toward wider consumption of online media will only continue.
But there are models that print media can follow to learn how to keep their young and web-savvy readers using print editions, says Kelley, and he advises publishers to look to online/off-line retailers for a model .
He says these retailers have come closest to figuring out ways to make off-line and online work together.
"They need to take lessons from the retail space and from multi-channel retailers, which have been learning to do this in the past year or two," he says.
Ultimately, the accepting attitude that the young and the wired bring toward the web will be one of the drivers for changing old media.
"You’re going to see an increasing role for the web in a lot of different areas of content that currently don’t have a huge role," Kelley says.
The study's findings, coupled with the enduringly dismal online ad-sales climate, also suggest that it’s inevitable that more web sites will begin charging for content.
As Kelley points out, Salon and even Yahoo have joined The Wall Street Journal in exacting a toll for their best content.
"I don’t see this changing anytime soon--more of these media companies are going to have to charge, or else," Kelley says.
February 12, 2002 © 2002 Media Life
-Marty Beard is a staff writer for Media Life.
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