Electric Fishwrap

Readers visit online news sources for their local news, no surprise there. But once you get into the details of commenting and networking, readers and editors diverge. This doesn’t sum up the entire report by the Associated Press Managing Editors, but it’s pretty close. The entire report is a whopping 89 pages long, but you can read the executive summary here.

I can’t say I am surprised. Throughout much of journalism history, editors have balked at using pseudonyms, and rightly so. But readers submit online comments with made-up names. Similarly, readers favored journalists joining the online conversation and presenting their opinions way more than editors:

In the editors, 27% thought it will be beneficial to good journalism online, 58% harmful, and 15% neutral. In comparison, 50% of the public said it will be beneficial, 36% harmful, and 14% neutral.

The good news: If people are looking for local news, they visit a newspaper Web site 37 percent of the time, more than any other traditional news outlet.

Also, 75 percent of readers regard online and print news equally, 15 percent of readers (24 percent of editors) trust print more, and 10 percent of the public and 3 percent of editors trust web reports more than print.

It would be interesting to compare this to historical data, but I would bet online credibility is increasing over time.

Circulation is declining across the country. Craigslist is becoming the go-to place for classified advertising. And then there’s the Internet. It’s going to be the end of newspapers!

Or is it?

The National Newspaper Association asked 22 news professionals to write about the future of newspapers. The NNA serialized it in a blog, here. Granted, I have not read every post. I’ve skimmed a few, and what seems to be the common denominator is that newspapers, if they are to survive, must adapt to changing technology and demands by the audience.

In a nutshell, if we continue to do the same thing we are going to continue to get the same results. Circulation will continue to decline. Advertising revenues will continue to go to other areas.

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So many journalists forget that we write for someone else. I, too, am guilty of that. I get so excited about some inside baseball factoid and I want to share it with the world.

But how should we convey that information?

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