Today made up for any disappointment that we had yesterday. We went to Pew Research Center and had a wonderfully engaging conversation for about two hours. We spoke with Tom Rosenstiel, the Director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and as Courtney mentioned, walked away feeling as though our IQ went up ten points.
Tom spoke with us about the changes in the media landscape. During this discussion he mentioned that in the 90s people and the press were concerned with infotainment, at the turn of 2000 there was a big media consolidation, and now the Internet has radically changed the news system. At the turn of 2000 people were worried that three or four corporations would control everything. Now, most of the corporations that had merged together are splitting apart and budgets are being cut. For example, Time Warner and AOL split and ABC has reduced its news budget by 25 percent.
We then shifted topics when Tom introduced a quote: “the old media doesn’t have an audience problem, it has a revenue problem.” The newspapers today have bigger audiences than they have ever had before, but the problem is advertisers no longer want to buy space in the newspapers because it is such a poor delivery system. They have found ways to narrow down their target demographic and directly deliver to them. Additionally, as more news is being consumed online, people view advertisements as a nuisance. Advertising is no longer as complimentary to the news content because people go online to look for a specific piece of information. Advertisers have refined their demographics and people no longer need to wait for the newspaper to read the classifieds. Technology has made the press almost unnecessary to transfer ads because people can do it themselves. They can go online and look up a product or service that they want or go to the store.
As a result of losing money, these news organizations are using the apps for the iPhone and the iPad as a second chance to help raise their revenue. They are making people pay for the convenience of having it directly on their phone and the efficiency of it. Tom also mentioned that people’s values have not changed and what they want in their news has not changed; it is just that the mediums in which people get their news has evolved.
What was perhaps the most interesting part of our discussion was toward the end. Tom began to talk about what he believes will happen to newspapers and what will happen in regard to television and technology. He believes that we will just have a Sunday newspaper or possibly a newspaper that runs on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday because those are the days that the news corporations make most of their money. He also believes that there will be a marriage between television and technology as people are watching a majority of the television on their computers. He said that there would be the iPhone, the iPad, and a large iPad that will be a wireless television with Internet capabilities.
Unfortunately all good things must come to an end. I was left with more questions I wanted answered. For example, when Tom mentioned the fact that people are consuming news 24 hours a day, I wanted to ask him how that is shifting and segmenting society. Also I wanted to ask him how he feels that has changed people on a more personal and psychological level. Just being in D.C. for five days it already feels as though there is not a normal seven-day week, but an eight-day week.
Tom was one of the most interesting people that I’ve gotten the pleasure of listening to and it was fascinating to learn that the companies who are interested in the Pew data do not do any of their own market research. Furthermore, the research conducted helps these companies shape their long-term plans.
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