Internet: The Death of US Newspaers

I was recently reading an article at Forbes.com written by John Zogby, one of the more respected pollsters in the United States. The article dealt with the dying newspaper industry in the United States. His findings were most interesting.

In two surveys he had undertaken, the Americans considered the Internet as the most reliable source of information. Among the respondents, 37%, more than a third, found the internet most reliable compared to the other sources of information. The traditional mass media were closely bunched together with television getting 17%, newspapers 16%, and radio 13%.

When the question posed was “if you had to choose just one news source, which would you choose”, the disparity become even more pronounced. Respondents overwhelming went with the Internet at 56%. 21% of the respondents went for television and radio and newspapers were tied at 10%.

What Zogby finds fascinating is the fact that “most of the news read on line is actually generated by one of the three traditional media sources, who publish online and have their news further disseminated by bloggers, Web news aggregators and social networks”. Yet there is a perception that the traditional mass media, the newpapers more specifically, are biased in their coverage of the news. Hence, because of this perception of bias, there is antipathy towards the newspapers.

It is interesting to note that Zogby cites the labeling of the newspapers as a liberal media by the political conservatives as the main source of the bias perception. And that despite the fact that the news originated from the traditional media, more credence was given to the information if the same were read or disseminated from the Internet!!! The only difference as noted by Zogby is that while the news emanate from the same old media, it was wrapped in “designer packaging that matches personal tasted and ideologies”.

In conclusion, Zobgy suggested that maybe the newpapers should “mimic their online competitors by packaging the same news in different Web sites that appeal to particular ideologies and interest groups”.

I think in the Philippine context, newspapers are still doing brisk business. Although, I believe that more Filipinos get their news from radio. This is because radio has not only the wider reach but also because they can break news as it happens. The Internet as source of news is still far from reaching the numbers it enjoys in the United States. Are we going to get there soon? I doubt it very much. Filipinos use their computers more for social networking rather than new retrieval. Filipinos also use the computers to retrieve information (as opposed to news) from the internet due to ease of use. The search engines have made life easier for all of us. Given these, I think the printed Philippine newspaper would continue to enjoy healthy earnings over the foreseeable future.