Newspapers still generate most news, despite Internet

Our friends at Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 95 percent of stories with "new information" came from traditional media, mostly newspapers.

The study found that most of the newer providers, including online blogs and those that use social media such as Twitter, "did not produce any local content" during the period studied.

In studying six major news "threads," the researchers concluded that "fully 83 percent of stories were essentially repetitive, conveying no new information."

Of the 17 percent that did contain new information, "nearly all came from traditional media either in their legacy platforms or in new digital ones," the researchers said.

Snapshots of papers that charge for content

PaidContent has an interesting piece that looks at how papers that began charging for online access are fairing. Most of the papers are small dailies and seem to be charging to protect their print edition.

Newspaper: Newport Daily News
City: Newport, R.I.
Circulation: 12,000
Pricing plan: Online-only subscriptions cost $5 a day, $10 a week, $35 a month, or $345 a year. Print and online combo subscriptions cost $11 a month or $100 a year. Obituaries, classifieds, blogs, and a copy of the front page are available for free online.
When pay wall was introduced: June 2009
Results: Publisher Buck Sherman told us that the goal was to “drive people back to the printed paper” and not to bring in online revenue. He says that so far “we have done well,” adding that single-copy sales are up 8 percent. Website traffic is down by about 30 percent since the paper began to charge, according to Compete figures.
Comment: The Daily News model grabbed headlines earlier this year because the paper was charging substantially more for the electronic edition of the paper than the print one. Competition is limited, with the much bigger Providence Journal pulling back on statewide coverage.

Anger and aggregation

The Seattle alt weekly The Stranger had an interesting piece on what might be in store for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if Hearst doesn't find a buyer by mid-March for Washington state's oldest business. A Hearst exec interviewed reporters to hear their ideas for an online-only version of the P-I.

In a significant departure from longstanding P-I practice, the new website, as currently conceived, will become, in part, an aggregator of links to interesting stories and blog posts elsewhere. If that sounds familiar, it should. The model has been pioneered by sites like HuffingtonPost.com, which takes an eclectic, opinionated, and often celebrity-focused approach to information gathering, mixing reports from its tiny staff with blog posts by notable actors and politicos, photo albums of fabulous people, and a constant stream of links to the hot news stories of the day (almost all originally reported by other publications).

'Is there life after newspapers?'

The question was asked in an article in the American Journalism Review. A graphic designer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, using a variety of sources, counted 15,000-plus job cuts from newspapers in 2008. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics showed payroll at newspapers decreased by 22,400 from January to October 2008. Scary stuff.

An unscientific poll conducted by the piece's author found:

• Just under 36 percent said they found a new job in less than three months. Add those who say they freelance full time, and the total jumps to 53 percent.
• Less than 10 percent say it took them longer than a year.
• Only a handful – 6 percent – found other newspaper jobs. The rest are doing everything from public relations to teaching to driving a bus and clerking in a liquor store.

The article also includes some personal anecdotes from former journalists after they left newspapers, including some who saw losing their jobs as opportunities.