Media Mis-Survey
Although I subscribe to the PEW RSS feed, the filter of my consciousness is rather noisy and prone to error – both kinds. So I was attracted by a blot of Matt Assay’s on the demise of the traditional media. [Link] I shall endeavor not to compromise what Matt has to say, which is much better said than I could paraphrase or plagiarize.
The root of all this is a PEW survey [Link] “Internet Overtakes Newspapers As News Source” that found that people now get their news more from the ‘net than from newspapers. As is usual however, the PEW reportage is misleading and is probably also misread by many.
The most misleading part of this is that the PEW report presents the percentage of people who state a given source: television; newspapers; ‘net; as their major source of news. A moment’s consideration of their presentation indicates that this is misleading and hence untrustworthy. Once more maths are misunderstood and misused.
To express this, consider the following percentages for year 2008: television -70%; Internet – 40%; and Newspaper 35%. Primary shul arithmetic is adequate to infer that 145% of the sample population have one of these three as their major source of news. The obvious problem here is that the entire population is capped at 100% so the PEW folks are being inaccurate.
What rather seems most likely is that the question asked by the PEW folks on their survey instrument (questionnaire) is “what are your major sources of news?” or some such. Then there was probably a check list that included at least these three sources.. Then we may read the chart as 70% of the sample population reported that television was a major source of news information for them, or something similar. The other two may be altered accordingly.
Note that this is not the same as the PEW reportage claimed by a rather great difference. The greatest difference, of course, is exclusivity. The original presentation gives, and may be planned to give, the implication that the three categories are exclusive, that those who get news from television do not get news from newspapers (e.g.) The most likely way that the data make sense is quite different. The exclusivity is absent as the numbers demonstrate.
The hypothesis that may be offered is that the ranking of news sources is: television; ‘net; newspapers. The difference between the latter two is small, and may be within the margin of error of consideration. If one only considers the subset of samples for young people, then the numbers are a bit clearer: television – 0.59; ‘net – 0.59; newspapers – 0.28; magazines – 0.18.
What may we extrapolate from this? While newspapers are deteriorating, a common subject of discussion - Matt has a neat take on this and I have commented on myself previously – I think the blogger-journalist war is not quite portrayed as Gotterdammerung accurately. Yes, bloggers and second and higher (lower?) order journalists do indeed make use of what is done by the first order journalists who actually generate the information. And yes, the cash model has links broken but it has always been weak in that sense. But to portend the collapse of a global system of information gathering, transportation, and emission? Well, perhaps a large part of the emission instrumentality.
What is happening is a response to changing social conditions. That change is the result of how society itself changes, in this case in how it uses the technologies that comprise the ‘net. A significant part of the print media has been engaged in wrangling first order gathered information into second or third order wrangled information that has been given a social context. This activity incidentally has a lesser extent in television news emission simply because it does not do well. There is a very good reason that reporters like Andy Rooney are exiled to a brief spot on Sunday mornings that is only observed by his few (dwindling) fans. On television this type of moralizing is the province of advertisements and any use of it by the news readers dilutes the message of their lords and masters and hence is minimized to sound bites and Sunday mornings when nothing sells and only drek is advertised.
So the interesting question is not whether newspapers will go away. Assuredly those whose only contribution is such moralizing and social ranting will. Those who report information straight and augment it by unique information will survive if considerably diminished. Gossip has been a popular product from the advent of language, long before newspapers. And the cash model will still be broken. People will not pay adequately for such information but they will give their attention to it and therein still lies the source of the cash. If anything that is what needs to be kept in focus here.
