The decline in the average duration of sessions at newspaper web pages suggests that visitors are not utilizing the industry’s sites as primary destinations, but, rather, as places to episodically view individual articles highlighted by Google News, Drudge, Digg, blogs or any of the thousands of other places they might be.
Well… duh!
No surprise that if you failed as a dead tree entity because of your crappy content, no one is spending time on your website. The most lame and pathetic part of print going to the internet is that they still, most of them, refuse to utilize it as an interactive experience. I always glance at the comments, if permitted, that follow an article. It’s no wonder that it’s now the role of talented bloggers to pick and chose the relevant and reveal the stupid on our behalf.
The other thing that stale old newspapers don’t get is that we don’t need all of content anymore, a lot of it is done better at other sites.
Google’s earnings said it all this week. Ad revenues are leaving print. And, now with a recession upon us, consumers shutting their wallets, advertising budgets are going to contract and businesses are going to get real picky where they put their ads.
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The real issue with the MSM newspapers is that you have to jump around to read many of them in order to glean what is news out of the fray of editorializing and postelizing that is rampant today….
The MSM has moved to the Tabloid, spin & sin market. They lost the information market to the Internet and blogs.
All one has to do is read the comments (if permitted) following a MSM article to see that even their readers see the BS.
Although I used to enjoy some of the non-political pieces at the NT Times website, I have stopped visiting the site simply because I do not want to elevate its hit-count and thus help the revenue stream of a paper whose bias I detest.
When a growing number of people no longer automatically take what they read as the truth is it any wonder? What I would like to see is the demographics of newspaper readership. When you see people my age and my friends cancelling home delivery I think the print media has a bigger problem than they are letting on. For me the bottom line is I am tired of someone force feeding me their views of the news instead of giving me the facts and letting me decide.
Save trees, read blogs.
Hay!
Currently, when I speak to friends and acquaintances about matters in the press, I find they are now asking me where I get my information. I say: Blogs on the internet, where an ‘in depth’ look at any of the ‘news of the day is readily available and openly discussed. Meaning, you can ask questions and/or give opinion. Not like the LSM at all.
I also point out that how many of us really want to constantly read or hear what the hell some holly-wierd idiot does last night or what surgery enhanced ‘glitter bug’ is screwing another’s ‘glitter bug’ or how much money an ‘enhanced’ smile gets them, this week…
I tell them I believe it’s a way to distract us from looking at the more serious issues on the home front.
And it’s worked ’til now…
🙂
Sites like this are my news source, daily.
Use to only get my news from purchased print media, newspapers, magazine subscriptions, and watching the nightly tv newscasts, etc.
I do none of that now.
They imagine themselves great movers and shakers. And their feedback? Polls. And where do they do their polling? In their own venue. They are preaching to their own shrinking choir, and imagining its adulation represents the world outside. While they read their poll results, they ignore the one true poll – their financial results.
It is a comedy now. If you look at the crest of the cliff, you will see how their knuckles were dragging in the dust just before they disappeared over the brink.
in Toronto’s Sunday Sun for April 20’th, TV critic Harris goes on a rant about Earth Day and how we must minimize our own use of hydro to prevent blackouts this summer ….
and this is in the Sun’s entertainment section …..
Canada’s MSM is now so excessively liberal and biased that I rely almost exclusively on sites like SDA and the like ….
and when I learn of layoffs and declining profits in the MSM it absolutely brightens my day ….
I have never subscribed to and very rarely ever even bought a newspaper. I have always simply taken the news highlights from radio and if I heard something important I would look further into the matter. That didn’t happen often because most matter had not direct affect on me and there was zero that I could do about it anyway.
Most of what’s going on in the world or even in your own country, province or town has little affect on your daily fare. Most of it will only piss you off or make you nervous. You can live more happily with about 99% of the new unknown to you.
I don’t say you should not pay attention and be ignorant, I simply mean that having to chuck about ten pounds of newsprint in the trash every week is silly and wasteful.
In recent years the Internet has changed everything. Thankfully we now have blogs like this one that we can visit virtually for free and get our news with great entertainment. Kate has an entertaining was of making a point as do many others.
For highlights, Drudge is a great place to glance at what you might want to know about. As far as the mainstream media online outlets, it’s the same hype and ‘managed’ news that tells you little about the truth of events and more about that you should be voting the Left wing parties who can make your world a perfect place.
The traffic stats on the MSM sites are one thing, but their online sponsors will decided how much bang they are getting for their buck and either stay or go. Those are the stats I would be interested in knowing.
You can live more happily with about 99% of the new unknown to you…
Disagree with that John V, as I view that this is what’s happening already. People don’t pay enough attention and don’t realize how it does affect your every day life. Like having a corrupt liberal government for decades. It has negatively affected me personally.
Why are newspapers losing readers? Could it be that readers reject their liberal bias? Let’s review:
* The NY Times runs forty five (45!) consecutive FRONT PAGE stories on America’s putting panties-on-the-head of prisoners at Abu Grahib. None of the stories mentioned the horrors which took place at the very same prison when run by saddam hussein. None of the stories gave credit to the military folks who actually blew the whistle on the abuse — it certainly wasn’t the result of any investigative reporting by the MSM.
* The LA Times runs a boob-groping scandal hit piece on Ahnold Schwarzenegger a couple of days before the gubernatorial election. Where were all the aggrieved “victims” of his alleged boorish behavior before the election (or since)? I cancelled my subscription the very next day.
* Jonah Goldberg wrote an excellent book illuminating the leftward bias in the media. Rather than fix their inherent problem, the media ripped Goldberg as a traitor. A Lou Harris poll revealed that 70 percent of self-described liberals think the media tilts to the left. Meanwhile, a Freedom Forum survey found that 89 percent of journalists voted for Bill Clinton in 1992.
* The first mainstream piece, in the Canadian Press dealing with the Free Speech controversy, was written by the mindless Liberal tool, Joan Bryden, who criticised Keith Martin’s motion to scrap section 13 because it was supported by racist lunatics. With a few notable exceptions, Canada’s newspapers have been largely silent with regard to protecting citizens’ cherished right to freely express themselves.
Enter the blogs. The fact of the matter is that North Americans are increasingly more likely to go to DrudgeReport.com than to open their dusty old newspapers. DrudgeReport does not create any news, but merely links to it … all of it, not just the news which the libs think is “fit to print”.
So watch the once powerful and influential might of the MSM slowly fade into the sunset. They have earned our contempt.
Blogs rule! Deal.
That description of the surfing habits of visitors to MSM websites fits me to a “T”. I almost never go to a MSM website on my own accord, unless in the rare case where I’ve heard about an event in one of my areas of interest, and want to (hopefully) learn more about it. Usually, any visits I make to an MSM site are the result of reading a blog post or a news aggregator.
And I don’t have a “home page” set in my browser, either.
I can’t stand the Drudge Report website. Everything, I mean everything, has a line drawn under it and takes focus away from what should be important.
This is just another step in the Web as it grows up.
Humans, over time on their own by interaction ensure social protocols are engineered, rules of communication, new forms of spreading information faster. Radio feared TV but is having a golden age in talk radio now. TV was dying out but you can see its changing as well in response to the internet, by specialty shows driven by demographics. Shows now can be purchased directly on the Web. As are films now. More going from production straight to DVD.
As the Internet ages more rules, newer features, more interaction will occur. As it does modus operandi will be developed. In any institution it does. Lets just hope there is always some freedom left by the end.
This whole thing should come as no surprise to print media. They themselves are the end product of a revolutionary means of communication. The printing press. Look what that wrought from revolutions to reformations. I see a triangulation of these mediums into one entity, probably by cortical implant. But that’s just personnel speculation though
Kinnda makes you wonder 50 years from now just how different it will be.
two comments:
1. When the history of this period in time is written, I think one of the biggest comments will be how the print media completely missed out on the opportunity to become the leaders in new media news.
2. If you think things are bad for print media it is nothing compared to what awaits MS television. Obliteration could happen within five years. All that prevents it from happening now is bandwidth cost.
Hey when your neighbor puts up a solar panel and you have to chop down you favorate shade tree and birds are put out of their homes and wind turbines are bird killers and yet the eco-freaks support them both AND THATS WHY IM LIABLE TO GET VIOLENT WITH THEM DAMN TREE HUGGERS IM GOING TO START PICKING OUT THEIR EYES SQUAWK SQUAWK