Study finds Internet a stiff competitor to newspapers, TV news

William Atkins
Friday, 17 August 2007 20:44

Science - Climate

A Harvard study by Thomas E. Patterson evalutated the future of news in the United States. He found that people are increasingly using the Internet for their news source, and they are less likely to use newspapers and broadcast news sources.

The one-year study focused on 160 websites on the Internet. It found that local newspapers show the largest decline in readership across the United States, along with difficulties in maintaining readership to their websites. According to the study, national newspaper circulation declined by 3% over the last year. Broadcast news on TV lost over one million viewers during that time.

The August 2007 report by Patterson, who is based at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Massachusetts, United States, was published as an article titled “Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look and News on the Internet”, as part of the Press, Politics and Public Policy.

Patterson’s report showed that people are increasingly going to news provided by Internet third-party sources such as digg.com, reddit.com, and google.com/news, which use various types of computer software to monitor news articles in various subjects such as business, heath, sports, entertainment, and science.

For instance, digg.com increased its readership from 12 million to 15 million from April 2006 to April 2007. Some of these Internet news sources, search engines, blogs, and other non-traditional websites grew by more than 30% during this one-year period.

The report stated that the websites of AOL, Google, MSN, and Yahoo have about 100 million visitors each month. They gained the most during this year period. On the other hand, about 7.5 million visitors per month go to websites of major TV networks like ABC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox, and NBC. They gained, on average, about 30% their websites.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, and other such major national newspapers average about 7 to 8 million visitors each month to their websites. They gained readership to their websites by about 10%. However, smaller newspapers, whether local, regional, or national, lost or barely maintained readership levels over the previous year.

In summary, the Patterson report saw that the Internet is greatly contributing to a re-distribution of how news is being seen and heard throughout the United States. Like the earlier change that occurred when cable and satellite stations altered news broadcasting in the United States, the Internet is having a similar affect on the nation.