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The New News Consumer
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21884 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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4 / 1994 |
2,419 Words |
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Lisa Calhoun
Lisa Calhoun is a writer who concentrates on issues that are
changing the world. |
From five-minute sound blurbs at the top of the hour on radio to 24-hour cable news coverage by television, the public has more news available--more newspapers, more news magazines, more network news shows--than even a year ago. Yet with all the news immediacy, diversity, and availability, surveys indicate a declining interest in the news. While the number of households grew 40 percent from 1970 to 1990, the circulation of newspaper dailies rose only 1 percent.
For 20 years, subscriptions to the three major news magazines--Time, US News & World Report, and Newsweek--have also been decreasing, relative to the growth of the population. Television news has become diluted with talk-show journalism and trash TV Television tabloids like A Current Affair and Hard Copy masquerade as news magazines, and their popularity is increasing even as the ratings of the old news standbys, 60 Minutes and 20/20, are falling.
The result? Nationwide studies show our population is less aware of major news events now than 50 years ago, when news resources were far more limited. Surveys from the 1940s, '50s, and '60s indicate that major news stories, such as the McCarthy hearings and the Vietnam War, enjoyed equal interest among young and old. Now, young news consumers, especially the under-30 group, are increasingly less aware of significant news events. In a survey conducted by the Times Mirror Center for People and the Press, 60 percent answered no to the question "Did you read a newspaper yesterday?"
Some cite the trivialization of the news through tabloids and gutter-television, others blame distrust of the media, poor literacy, and a techno-junkie, push-button approach to news. Another valid observation considers that, with the proliferation of multimedia entertainment and news options, the traditional news media simply suffer from a glutted market. But despite a plethora of possible explanations, the survival issue facing today's news media is how to interest the uninterested. The answer is a more creative, holistic, community-oriented approach to news that relies on demographic analysis to reconnect the real news with the news consumer.
Today's media public
Today's news consumer is in the information fast lane, flipping on the radio in the car to work, scanning newspaper headlines during lunch, grabbing a news magazine in the airport, catching the evening news with dinner. Statistically, the average newspaper reader (according to the latest study of
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