Month: October 2012

This is some scary stuff if you value real news reporting-

Jerry Ackerman former newspaper man and great Gloucester citizen forwards this blog post from another former newspaper guy Alan D. Mutter’s blog:

MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2012

The incredible shrinking newspaper audience

Once the definitive mass medium, newspapers – in both their print and digital incarnations – have shrunk to being niche players in the typical market, according to a number of must-read research reports released in the last few weeks.

With approximately a third of adults in the average community saying they use either a print or digital edition of their local paper to stay informed, newspapers today remain “super niches,” a term I heard for the first time a few years ago from Ron Mulder, who now works at Scarborough Research.  But a distinct lack of interest in newspapers among those under the age of 50 suggests it is only a matter of time before the niche turns from “super”  to “sliver.”

As detailed in a moment, a steadily accumulating body of research shows that consumers are using computers, mobile devices and even Facebook to shop actively for news and information. While the research shows that newspapers have slightly more market clout in small and isolated communities than in cities and suburbs, the trends all point in the same direction. Although publishers in small and medium markets have slightly more time to adapt to the digital revolution than their metro colleagues, the challenges causing the New Orleans Times-Picayune to abandon seven-day print publication will affect all but a few outlier markets in the fullness of time.

Here’s what we know from the wealth of research that has come our way:

for the entire post click here