A small life raft, indeed
Despite what you're going to read, there isn't all that much comfort for newspaper traditionalists in the latest report from the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.
The answer? Don't be a traditionalist.
To assume that it's good news for print when the growth of online news visitors slows is to neglect our future. For that matter, viewing newspapers and online as enemies is old thinking. The Internet opens up wonderful worlds of journalism to newspapers. Audio, video, interactivity, 24/7, and limitless space. We can take visitors places neither of us have been. Imagine helping visitors find information they're looking for one by one. Imagine different partnerships and learning we can have with the audience. Oh, the places you can go.
Newspapers should be as concerned by the slow growth online as we are about the health of newspapers. There is audience out there that isn't finding what it wants or needs on our Web sites or newspapers. (I admit I don't know what to make of the young adults who aren't visiting news sites. My teenagers aren't big news consumers either in print, TV or online but whenever I mention something to them that's in the news, they already know about it.)
The challenges, then, are still out there in a big way. But so are the answers, which are being discovered every day. We just need to join the explorers and discoverers and adopt and innovate. And we need to do it more quickly than we are.
A side note: The report confirms that readers come to newspapers for local news.
It's a deep report, and I'll have more later, but I like this from Editor & Publisher's report on the Pew survey: One advantage still held by the newspaper over fast-paced outlets such as radio, TV and the Internet is that a majority of people find it relaxing to read the newspaper.
Go figure.