(Rich Gordon)

The online-news email list, run by the Poynter Institute, has long been a place for people involved in online journalism to discuss and debate important questions about the future of media and journalism.

A recent discussion turned to a particularly interesting question: What's happening to Americans' interest in - and understanding of - the news?

A recent report from the Pew Research Center for the People and Press offers some illuminating answers. It compares people's knowledge of certain news facts (such as the name of the vice president or the party controlling the House of Representatives) in 1989 and in 2007.

The positioning of the report is a bit odd, as it sets up a straw man (information is more widely available so people should be better informed) and then knocks it down ("... the coaxial and digital revolutions and attendant changes in news audience behaviors have had little impact on how much Americans know about national and international affairs.")

Those of us who've spent time in the trenches of the digital "news revolution" know that increased availability of information doesn't necessarily translate into greater interest in the news. In fact, the information glut contributes to the "too much" experience that inhibits usage of news media, according to Readership Institute research. So I'd interpret the survey results a little differently: they show a measurable, but not overwhelming, decline since 1989 in the percentage of Americans who are knowledgeable about the kinds of news facts (mostly relating to national affairs) that Pew asked about:



Now, one might argue that knowing the name of the president of Russia isn't a good indicator of news interest or knowledge, since so much research has found that people's greatest interests lie in local news. But as an indicator of how closely people are following "the news," generically defined, these are not bad data points.

Perhaps more interesting in the Pew report is that researchers ranked how knowledgeable people are about news (as measured by a "news quiz" they administered) based on the news sources people use "regularly." Respondents were identified as "high knowledge" (answered 15 of 23 questions correctly), "moderate" knowledge (10-14 correct answers) and "low knowledge" (9 or fewer correct answers). Here are the findings:



Pew did not define "regular" use for the respondents, so it was up to the people taking the survey to categorize their media use. Of course, high scores on the news quiz were not caused by watching the Daily Show or listening to NPR. But these numbers do show that regular use of any news source correlates to at least average performance on the news quiz.

To me, this reinforces one of the key findings of traditional research into journalism and society: the importance of the "news habit." And it also reinforces one of journalism's (and our democratic society's) key challenges of the the 21st century: digital news is less habit forming.

The average user of a print newspapers spends five or six hours a month with it, while even the most successful online news sites get the attention of users for less than an hour a month. This is counterbalanced to an extent by the fact that online users may visit multiple sites over a time period when they might read just one print newspaper. But it seems clear that print newspapers are more conducive to habit formation - they get delivered to porches and are sold in prominent, high-traffic locations - than Internet news is today. TV news watching also became a habit for many people who arranged their dinners around Walter Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley.

At least part of the solution, I think, lies in building community around news content. This case study about the Racine Journal Times shows how allowing user participation can build interest and loyalty. Researchers at Belden Associates, who surveyed the paper's online users about their reason for visiting the site, got interesting answers.

"When you look through the Racine comments, what I noticed most was the ones that said they came 'to find out what’s happening now' or 'what’s going on,'"said Greg Harmon, director of interactive for Belden. "It went from being yesterday’s news, a repurposed-content site, to a place where people have a real dynamic sense of what’s happening now."

I'm sure community building isn't the only answer. But whether you're most worried about the business future of news media or the decline in news knowledge among the public, this much is clear: the news industry needs to keep working on how to "crack the code" on how to create a habit around digital news.


By Rich Gordon (richgor@northwestern.edu)
Rich Gordon is Associate Professor and Director of Digital Technology in Education at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.