The daunting challenges we face

http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/state_of_the_media_by_the_numb.php

"Highlights"...

1. We estimate that the newspaper industry has lost $1.6 billion in annual reporting and editing capacity since 2000, or roughly 30 percent, which leaves an extra $4.4 billion remaining. Even if the economy improves, we predict more cuts in 2010.

2. A new survey on online economics, released in this report for the first time, finds that 79 percent of online news customers say they rarely if ever have clicked on an online ad.

3. Only about one third of Americans (35 percent) have a news destination they would call a favorite and even among these users, only 19 percent said they would continue to visit if the site put up a paywall.

4. 70 percent of Americans feel overwhelmed rather than informed by the amount of news and information they see.

 

No surprises here.

 

On No. 2 (anyway) I don't think that advertisers are expecting 79 percent of readers to click on their ads.

 

The opportunity for our growth and success moving forward is contained in No. 4.

 

From the WaPo today:

 

Yeah, but did they click on the ads in the newspaper?

 

The difference is you can buy a spot in the paper with all the information that you want people to see. On the internet you get a little banner that people need to click to see the rest of the information.

 

Much of the remaining 20% is simply ripped off with no attribution.

 

No, they didn't click on ads in the newspaper. They cut out coupons, found out about candidates for city council, school boards, proposals for taxes to build roads or parks or schools. They looked for used cars, apartments and jobs. All those things were valuable to readers at one point. Not so much anymore.