If you could only keep one news source, what would it be?
Mon, May 26, 2008
Gulp. In the, not-very-good-news-for-newspapers category comes a survey from Denmark which was picked up by the E-Media Tidbits bloggers on the Poynter Institute site.
The survey found that Danes aren’t too bothered about the long-term survival of newspapers, as the response to the following statement demonstrates:
“Today it’s possible to stay informed without subscription to a daily paper:”
- Agree/mostly agree: 79 percent
- Disagree/mostly disagree: 16 percent
- Neither/don’t know: 5 percent
Analyse Danmark asked 2800 people: If you could only access daily news through one type of media, which would you prefer to keep? Newspapers lost by a large margin. Half of respondents preferred to keep their TV, and 27 percent would keep their Internet access. Only 23 percent would keep their daily newspaper (national, regional, niche, or tabloid).
Tags: Danish, news sources, Newspapers, readership, survey
It would have been very interesting if they’d asked a further question like: of your preferred news source, which site/paper/station would you pick as your one source…
Imogen
Yeah, you’re right. Even more interesting if we could ask that question of people over here!
I think you will find a question exists on the New Zealand NRS that asks what peoples prefered source of news is. If it isn’t it certainly used to be.
The question in the survey does seem a bit disengenuous to me, particularly when you consider that the reason “a subscription” to a daily newspaper is not necessary is because people are accessing the news on the same newspapers own website, containing much of the same content.
I am not familar with the particular survey in question and there is no description of how the survey was conducted. In many cases these surveys are conducted online with a heavily skewed sample. In my experience it is impoossible to measure comparative media behaviour or consumption using online data collection, particluarly when one of the media you are comparing is online.
I am not suggesting this research was conducted online however if it was it is symptomatic of the poor quality of much media research conducted online.