Pew Study Dissects Relative Popularity of Local News Sources
The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and Internet & American Life Project, along with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, has released the results of a phone survey of more than 2,000 American adults who were asked about local news sources. The report, "How People Learn About Their Local Community," is a must-read if you run local programs or otherwise target local or regional media.
The report is the first of its kind because it parses out types of local information consumed through different types of media. The authors explain that "[c]onventional research has tended to ask people about local news and information generically with some variation of a simple question: Where do people turn most often for their news? Asked that way, the majority of people answer local TV .... And this new survey, too, finds that local TV is the most frequently used medium for news and information ...."
However, and I'm highlighting, "[t]his survey also took a new approach as well, asking people about the information sources they rely on to get material about 16 different specific local information areas. The result is a more complex portrait of how people learn and exchange information about community. The new data explodes the notion, for instance, that people have a primary or single source for most of their local news and information."
So, more people use TV to get local news and information than any other single source, but if you pull apart types of information, other sources rise to the top of the list of preferred media.
Pew offers an interactive tool that lets you examine responses based on age of the respondents and type of information. They say that age is the most important factor in determining preferred media type. "Simply put," the authors say, "one generation into the web, older consumers still rely more heavily on traditional platforms while younger consumers rely more on the internet. Among adults under age 40, the web ranks first or ties for first for 12 of the 16 local topics asked about." They move on to explain that newspapers and TV outpace the web in terms of sources for local info sources for people over the age of 40.
To me, this means that local healthcare programs that prioritize coverage with local TV affiliates and newspapers are still critical for reaching older audiences, but that communicators should be sure to look for every opportunity to secure coverage with local bloggers and other online outlets to reach younger people.
The report also points out that almost half of all adults get information on their smartphones or other mobile devices. This is terrific reminder for all marketers that their web presence should be designed with mobile users in mind.
Posted by Laura Kempke on September 30, 2011 at 10:42 AM
