News consumption and the new electronic media

Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 29-52

  Ahlers, Douglas ^a,b  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Modem Media ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

Consumption; Internet; Media; Offline; Online

Indexed keywords

EID: 31044452508     PISSN: 1081180X     EISSN: 1531328X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X05284317     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Source for Newspaper Circulation Chart: Newspaper Association of America, "Research Statistics: Circulation Volume" (May 2005). Available from www.naa.org. Data from Editor &Publisher; NAA Market and Business Analysis Department.
2. Source for TV Network News Viewership Chart: The Project for Excellence in Journalism, "The State of the News Media 2005," Journalism.org (March 2005): Network TV. Available from www.stateofthemedia .org/2005/. From Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com. Ratings taken for the month of November.
3. "The Collapse of Big Media," The Wilson Quarterly 15, no. 2 (spring 2005): 39.
4. Terry Gastland, "Starting Over," The Wilson Quarterly 15, no. 2 (2005): 40.
5. Philip Meyer, The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004).
6. Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997).
7. Michael E. Porter, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance (New York: Free Press, 1985).
8. Ibid., 6.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid., 197.
11. Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999).
12. Thomas Hess, "IS in Media," Turku School of Economics, Institute for Information Systems and New Media, Munich School of Management, April 6, 2004.
13. U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, "The Emerging Digital Economy: Chapter 4 - Digital Delivery of Goods and Services" (1998), available from www.technology.gov/digeconomy/danc4.htm.
14. Vivek Chaudhri, "Pricing and Efficiency of a Circulation Industry: The Case of Newspapers," Information Economics and Policy 10(1998): 59-76.
15. Pekka Ahtiala, "Content, Advertising, and Circulation in an Optimizing Model of the Media Firm" (paper presented at the University of Tampere, Finland, December 2003), 1-2.
16. Robin Cowan, "High Technology and the Economics of Standardization" (paper presented at the International Conference on Social and Institutional Factors Shaping Technological Development: Technology at the Outset, Berlin, May 27-28, 1991), 4.
17. Frank Magid Associates for the Online Publishers Association, "Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study" (2004), available from www.online-publishers.org.
18. Ibid.
19. Veronis Suhler Stevenson, "Communications Industry Forecast & Report" (2004). www.vss.com
20. Ibid., 59.
21. Jeffrey Cole, "Surveying the Digital Future: The Impact of the Internet, Year Four: The Emergence of Trends" (Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Communication Policy), Chart DEFI 56. Presentation at the iMedia Conference, Bonita Springs, Florida, February 9, 2004.
22. Stevenson, "Communications Industry Forecast & Report," 51.
23. The survey used online intercepts at forty-one Web sites including the online sites for the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Newsweek, the San Jose Mercury News, the Chicago Tribune, the Dallas Morning News, the Today Show, ESPN, The Weather Channel, HGTV, MSNBC, the Food Network, and Internet Broadcasting Systems (a syndicate of hundreds of local TV station Web sites), and others.
24. Magid Associates, "Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study."
25. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid.
26. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid.
27. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid.
28. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid.
29. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid. The survey only examined Internet news site visitors aged eighteen to fifty-four. Data are unavailable on these customer segments for adults aged fifty-five and older. This does not affect our analysis as it most likely overstates the amount of online news usage because fewer people fifty-five and older are online. According to the LISC Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, 67 percent of adults aged fifty-six to sixty-five are online and only 38 percent of those sixty-five and older are online. This compares with 92 percent for adults aged nineteen to twenty-four, 85 percent for those aged twenty-five to forty-five, and 78 percent for those aged forty-six to fifty-five.
30. Magid Associates, "Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study."
31. Television Bureau of Advertising, Nielsen Media Research Custom Survey 2003. Available from www.tvb.org.
32. LISC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future, "The Digital Future Report: Survey-ing the Digital Future, Year Four," September 2004. www.digitalcenter.org
33. Magid Associates, "Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study."
34. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid.
35. Multi-channel Media Brands: Attitudinal and Usage Study Ibid. The "offline-only" users in this study were intercepted online and stated their preference for using offline news media versus online news media. The actual offline-only market segment is therefore much larger than the 13 percent stated in the survey. Missing from this group are the Internet users who never visit any online news sites (30 percent of all Internet users according to February 2005 MediaMetrix data [unpublished data]), We estimate that 68.4 percent of these online non news users are really offline-only as opposed to "dabblers," which means that an additional 27.073 million adults are offline only. The numbers also do not include the "have-nots" the 39.4 percent of the U.S. adult population (according to MediaMetrix February 2005 data) that are not online at all (85.850 million adults). Asa conservative estimate, we apply the 68.4 percent ratio to this number as well (assuming that some [31.6 percent] will dabble at some point in the future). Therefore, 58.721 million U.S. adults are not online and probably never will be, and should also be counted as offline-only users. So there are really three groups that compose the total offline-only population: (1) offline only who are online and may occasionally visit a news Web site but prefer and rely on offline media for their news (11.776 million adults), (2) online users who never visit online news Web sites (as measured by those who were online but had not visited a news Web site during the month of February 2005, according to MediaMetrix) (27.073 million adults), and (3) those people who have never been online and will likely never go online (the have-nots) (58.721 million adults). The total of these three offline only groups is 97.57 million or 44.8 percent of the U.S. adult population.
36. Cole, "Surveying the Digital Future," Chart Q700 (K-52R).
37. Cole, "Surveying the Digital Future," Chart Q690 (K-51).
38. Merrill Brown, "Abandoning the News," Carnegie Reporter 3, no. 2 (2005). Available from www.carnegie.org/reporter/10/news.
39. Federal Communications Commission, Industry Analysis and Technology Division Wireline Competition Bureau, "High-Speed Services for Internet Access: Status as of June 30, 2004," December 2004. Available from www.fcc.gov/web/iatd/comp.html.
40. Jupiter Research, "Internet Access Model" (September 2002). www.jupiterresearch.com
41. U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, "A Nation Online: Entering the Broadband Age" (September 2004), 8. www.ntia.doc.gov/reports/anol/
42. U.S. Department of Commerce, "A Nation Online," 11.
43. John Horrigan, Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Pew Internet Project Data Memo" (April 2004). Available from www.pewinternct.org.
44. Universal McCann, www.universalmccann.com. As cited by Newspaper Association of America. Available from www.naa.org.
45. Veronis Suhler Stevenson, "2004 Communications Industry Forecast & Report Highlights," VSS Research Publications (2005), 6. Available from www.vss.com/pubs/pubs_cif_highlights.html.
46. TNS Media Intelligencc/CMR unpublished data (2004), www.tns-mi.com. As cited in Project for Excellence in Journalism, Journalism.org, "The State of the News Media 2005." Available from www.statcofthemeclia.org.
47. Radio & Television News Director's Association. (2005) Available from www.rtnda.org/ research.
48. TNS Media Intelligence/CMR (2004).
49. Kagan Research, unpublished data (2004), www.kagan.com. As cited in Project for Excellence in Journalism, Journalism.org, "The State of the News Media 2005." Available from www.stateofthemedia.org. Industry averages calculated based on Kagan Research data.
50. Rick Bruner, DoubleClick, "10 Years: The Decade in Online Advertising, 1994-2004" (April 2005), Figure 6. Available from www.doubleclick.com.
51. U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook: Printing and Publishing (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2000), 25-26.
52. Kagan Research (2005), www.kagan.com.
53. Project for Excellence in Journalism, Journalism.org, "The State of the News Media 2005." Available from: www.stateofthemedia.org/2005/ printable_overview_economics.asp.
54. Nielsen Media Research unpublished data, www.nielsenmedia.com. Ratings for November, 2004.
55. Tom Lowry and Ronald Grover, "NBC: Now It's Wait-and-See TV,"BusinessWeek Online (May 9, 2005), Entertainment Section. Available from www.businessweekasia.com/magazine/contcnt/05_19/b3932130.htm.
56. Newspaper data: Newspaper Association of America, Business Analysis Research Department (June 2005). Available from www.naa.org, Trends & Numbers Section, "Annual Newspapers Advertising Expenditures." Internet data: Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), "IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report: 2004 Full-Year Results" (April 2005). www.iab.net. Data for all other media: Universal McCann (2005). Available from: www.universalmccann.com.
57. Interactive Advertising Bureau, PricewaterhouscCoopers, "IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report," 10.
58. Newspaper Association of America, Business Analysis Research Department (June 2005). Available from www.naa.org, Trends & Numbers Section, "Annual Newspapers Advertising Expenditures."
59. The New York Times Company, "Annual Report" (2004). www.nytco.com/investors-reports.html
60. Based on data from Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB); Borrell Associates, "2005 Outlook: The Boom Continues for Online Auto Ads" (February 2005);
61. and from Borrell Associates, "What Local Web Sites Earn" (July 2004). Available from www.iab.net/rcsources/borrell.asp. Based on IAB percentages and Autotradcr.com revenues and cars.com and EBay Auto traffic in relation to Autotrader.
62. Borrell Associates, "The Boom Continues for Online Auto Ads," 5.
63. National Association of Realtors, "The 2004 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers," 2004, 4-5. www.realtor.org
64. Borrell Associates, "Client Memorandum: New Estimates for Online Real Estate Advertising" (May 18, 2005), 3. www.borrellassociates.com
65. Newspaper Association of America, Business Analysis Research Department (June 2005). Available from: www.naa.org, Trends & Numbers Section, "Classified Category Detail."
66. Borrell Associates,"2005 Outlook: Online Recruitment Advertising"(December 2004), 4. www.borrellassociatcs.com
67. Newspaper Association of America, "Classified Category Detail," 2005.
68. Borrell Associates, "2005 Outlook: Online Recruitment Advertising," 4.
69. Knight-Ridder Inc., "U.S. SEC Form 10K," Fiscal year ending December 26, 2004. www.knightridder.com/investor/
70. New York Times Company, "Annual Report" (2004). And presentation by the New York Times Company CFO, Leonard Forman, at the Bear Sterns 18th Annual Media Conference, Palm Beach, Florida, February 28, 2005.
71. Katherine Q. Seelye, "Los Angeles Times Reduces Size of Its National Edition," New York Times, March 2, 2005.
72. Knight-Ridder, Inc., "Annual Report" (2004). www.knightridder.com/investor/
73. Annys Shin, "Newspaper Circulation Continues to Decline: Internet, Cable Cited as Competition," Washington Post, May 3, 2005:E03.
74. The New York Times Company, Press Release, "The New York Times Company Reports NYTimes.com's Record-Breaking Traffic for March" (April 18, 2005). www.nytco.com
75. Knight-Ridder Inc., "U.S. SEC Form 10K" (2004).
76. U.S. SEC Form 10K Ibid.
77. U.S. SEC Form 10K Ibid.
78. U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Industry and Trade Outlook: Printing and Publishing (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Commerce, 2000), 25-26.
79. New York Times Company, "Annual Report" (2004).
80. Gannett, "Annual Report" (2004).
81. Knight-Ridder Inc., "Annual Report" (2004).
82. Janet Robinson, chief operating officer, The New York Times Company (presentation at the CSFB and USB Media Week conferences, New York, December 8, 2004).