Understanding "the digital divide"
A new Pew study of online news usage is loaded with interesting information for anyone who’s trying to figure out the future of news. It points out that broadband access produces very different and stronger consumption patterns, even among young adults.
For anyone trying to puzzle out the future of news, the Pew study on online news consumption released yesterday is chock full of notable data.
In the Newspaper Next project, we think and talk frequently about how situation- and occasion-dependent people's use of news and information is. In other words, people are trying to get different jobs done at different times, and any particular news/information product, channel or format may or may not be their best solution in a given situation.
So the Pew report's finding that there are two very different patterns of online news consumption among broadband vs. dialup users makes a tremendous amount of sense. It's fascinating to see that, while both groups might be lumped together as "being online," a much higher level of online news consumption emerges among those who don't have to dial in and wait for slow downloads.
Among younger adults, a difficult audience for print newspapers, a different news usage pattern emerges among those with broadband: "Almost half (46%) of broadband users in this age group get news online on the average day, more than twice the rate (21%) of dial-up users in this cohort." Based on a previous Pew study, this stat for online consumption is about twice the percentage of young adults that regularly read print newspapers. That’s encouraging.
In fact, the Pew report's stats on online news consumption seem encouraging in general. On the other hand, the report says only 37% of Americans have broadband at home. That's a lot, and it has almost quadrupled in four years, but it still means that almost 2/3 of the population remains on the dark side of the digital divide.
For those of us on the light side, it's hard to remember what life was like in the old dialup days. And if you're spending your time trying to develop great online news and information solutions that get high-value jobs done for people, it's discouraging to realize that almost 2/3 of the potential online audience probably won't be that interested.
On the other hand, though, the broadband growth rate points out that great online news and information solutions can expect fast growth as more and more people cross from dialup to broadband. And that's exciting.
Comments
The Ghetto of Content
I think that this is interesting point. The digital divide, more and more poeple are finding that the print or the broadcast side of media is the wrong side of the tracks to be on. Just three years ago if you wrot e for a website you felt as if you might never be accepted by the old media counterparts that preceded you. That's changed, but I don't think it's changed simply because a more desirable audience, a more influential audience, a higher level of disposable income audience is online. The state of the news media, non-profit run by Columbia Journalism students, pointed out that online news consumers, whilst on the rise in numbers and also individual time spent on this pursuit is on the rise, this tends to be a group that gorges on media. Meaning, your typical online news consumer also watches cable television, and has a few magazine subscriptions, etc. As an ad sales professional what that means to me is that campaigns have to be more integrated, and that journalism schools need to renovate curriculums so that news producers can find ways to build loyalty with these consumers across channels.
Posted by: Donna Bulford | June 5, 2006 07:31 PM