Electronic News Keeps Newspapers Relevant

 ANN ARBOR (Disassociated Press) May 18, 2006 – While many newspaper professionals and media and communications analysts have had dire predictions for our nations newspapers, long thought to be a stalwart of our democracy, a new study at the Institutional for Social Research here at the University of Michigan points to silver lining in what might otherwise be viewed as gray skies.

         “We’ve found that, even though there are many fewer people reading newspapers today than there used to be, most people are still aware of what the major newspapers are reporting because of references to newspaper articles made in electronic media outlets,” stated Bartholomew J. Sneed, Communications Professor at that University.

         The study focused on both the various electronic media and consumers of those media.  Across television, radio and the internet, it was discovered that in 74% of the news segments or internet web pages, a reference was made to an article that had been published in a newspaper.  Similarly, 97% of electronic media consumers who claimed to either read newspapers never or rarely nevertheless were able to reference a newspaper article that had been referred to in some electronic medium that they had consumed that week.

         “As it happens, people like Bill O’Reilly, Anderson Cooper and Chris Matthews have become ‘newspaper reading surrogates’ of sorts for an increasingly faster moving population,” surmised Sneed.

         In the wake of ever declining profitability in the newspaper industry, Sneed offers this suggestion.  “Perhaps the big electronic media interests should start subsidizing the daily newspaper, in order to keep them in operation.  Otherwise, what will they have to talk about?”

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