Online only news outlets have been growing at a historic pace, creating 3,000 new journalism jobs among the 30 top online only media firms, while close to 63% of US adults watch videos online, according to a study by Pew Research Center.
Online media video consumption becomes commonplace
The Pew study, The State of News Media, studied 30 large media web such as Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Gwaker, Vice, Politico, as well as 438 smaller start-ups, found a growing trend towards watching news video online. 63% of all US adults watch video of all kinds online, while 50% of people under 50 years old view news video online, while 10% post their own videos.
Hard to give up internet, cellphones
A major trend the study noted was the importance of the Internet and cell phones in everyday life relative to television. Asking the question: How hard would it be to give up your cellphone, Internet, television, or landline phone, the study pointed to the insight that giving up the Internet and cellphones were most difficult, a growing trend, while giving up television and landline phones continued a downtrend.
Print is not dead
This is not to say that “print is dead,” the study noted. Traditional print and television garner over half of the money supporting journalism, despite the fact that newspaper revenue was down 52% from 2003 to 2012 (the most recent data point). “The vast majority of bodies producing original reporting still lie within the newspaper industry,” the study observes. “But those newspaper jobs are far from secure.” The report notes full-time newsroom employment dipped by 6.4% in 2012, the most recent datapoint, “with more losses expected for 2013.”
Cable news, which continues to garner a large percentage of advertising revenue, continued to drop in viewership. Primetime ratings for CNN, Fox and MSNBC combined was 11 percent lower, dropping to nearly 3 million viewers, the lowest level since 2007.
“A new sense of optimism”
Pointing to positive developments in the media industry, the report notes with “a new sense of optimism” the addition of “a new breed of entrepreneurs” such as Jeff Bezos, who purchased the Washington Post, and Pierre Omidyar, who runs digital-only journalism sites under First Look media label.
