I have news... about news.
Buried deep in the Pew Research Center’s annual State of the News Media 2012 report is an interesting statistic about how people consume news; and it’s one that bodes well for mainstream mediums like radio.
What first grabbed my attention was this little gem, “Just 9% of digital news consumers say they ‘very often’ follow news recommendations from Facebook or Twitter. In comparison, more than a third say they ‘very often’ go directly to news organizations on one of their devices; 32% get news by searching and 29% use some sort of news organizer site or application.”
That’s good news for, well… news-related Web sites.
But here’s what I found interesting. Digging deeper I discovered that not everyone is getting their news digitally. Not by a long shot. Of the more than 3,000 people who took part in the survey:
- 2,342 own a computer but only 1,602 say they get their news on it.
- 1,180 own a smartphone but only 571 get their news on it.
- 511 own a tablet but only 291 get news on it.
That leaves a lot of people not getting their news digitally at all. Add in the fact that a lot of the people who get news digitally probably also consume news from other sources — like radio — and the sky has not fallen.
If we keep delivering important, relevant content radio will remain a part of listener’s lives for a long time to come.
Posted on April 5, 2012
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