Scope

Drawing primarily on North American sources, this paper reviews current trends in the consumption of news in the US, and projects forward ten years to predict the shape of the news media in 2015, and its anticipated impacts on society. The goal of the paper is to provide the reader with a better understanding of how today's trends will shape the future of the news, and in turn, how these news media will shape society.

Not examined are tomorrow's news managing software features (e.g. automated news monitoring, gathering and awareness systems), nor advertising and marketing methods of the future (e.g. targeted pricing). Consequently, many issues of presentation, ethics and privacy are excluded from this short paper.

Americans Get Their News Increasingly on the Internet

American TV network news and newspaper audiences have declined significantly in recent years, and radio audiences are getting smaller, while internet news demand has grown dramatically. If present trends continue, in the year 2015, the internet may be the predominant source of news for Americans, outscaling radio and print media, and quite possibly TV news; today, the most popular source of news for Americans.

According to a series of extensive biannual surveys, conducted by the Pew Center for the People and the Press (Pew, 2004), the traditional news media's news offerings in the USA retain relatively flat or declining audiences from April 1996 to April 2004, while the internet news audience has significantly increased, from only 2% of those surveyed in 1996, to 29% in 2004 - an increase of 1,450% over eight years.

Note. Data sourced from "Online news audience larger, more diverse /
news audiences increasingly politicized / Pew Research Center biennial news consumption survey," by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2004.

In contrast, American TV news and newspaper audiences have declined significantly since May 1993, and are aging, while the radio news audience has been more stable. (Pew, 2004)

"One of the few upward trends in [news] media consumption in recent years has been the percentage of Americans who turn to internet sources for news? The online news audience is young, affluent and well-educated" (Pew, 2004).

In a 2005 survey of American preferences, Pew found that demand for internet news is consistently stronger the younger the cohort (Pew, 2005). The research also showed that radio and magazine consumption was fairly consistent for all age groups, but that lower usage is seen for TV news and newspapers the younger the cohort (except TV news in the 18-29 age cohort). A chart of the findings is shown below:

Note. Above data sourced from "Public more critical of press, but goodwill persists /
online newspaper readership countering print losses,"
by The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2005.

If present trends continue, the internet may well be the dominant source of news for Americans in the year 2015. The data suggests that the internet audience will almost certainly surpass the radio and print media audiences, and may also surpass television news viewership. (See "Appendix 1: Pew News Consumption Trends" for a more detailed summary.)

Internet dominance seems even more likely if one factors in that television and radio broadcasts are becoming more widely available on the internet; that global internet use continues to climb rapidly (Chen & Wellman, 2004, p. 40); and that the young online news audience will grow older, while many in the older cohorts will reach the end of their lives by 2015.

The Internet Future is Portable, Wireless and Intelligent

"With sales of 600 million units a year, mobile phones are simultaneously the world's most widespread communications devices, computing devices and consumer-electronics products" (The Economist, September 25, 2004, p. 15).

Other consumer-electronics trends confirm the trend towards predominantly wireless communications and computing. IT trade analysis firm Current Analysis notes in a June 3, 2005 news release that, "notebook sales surpassed desktop sales in the U.S. retail market in May. This marks the first time that notebooks have outsold desktops over the course of a full month" (Bhavnani, 2005).

Nor is the trend toward mobile and wireless restricted to the developed world:

China is the world's largest market for mobile phones, and Africa is the fastest-growing. In the least developed parts of the world, entrepreneurs such as Bangladesh's "telephone ladies" rent out mobiles by the minute, putting phones into the hands of even the poorest. The oft-quoted statistic that two-thirds of the world's population has never made a phone call is no longer true. (The Economist, September 25, 2004, p. 15)

According to The Wall Street Journal (November 14, 2005, p. B1), a non-profit organization called One Laptop Per Child, headed by Nicholas Negroponte, the founding chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, has the ambitious goal of developing a wireless, internet-ready, $100 laptop computer for distribution to millions of school children in developing countries.

"Mr. Negroponte says current plans call for producing five to ten million units beginning in late 2006 or early 2007 - [he] remains eager to place the laptop in the hands of 100 to 150 million students" (The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2005, p. B1).

Mobile, internet-connected technology is on its way to becoming ubiquitious:

The internet players will partner with the established operators [telecommunication carriers] to pursue a common goal of convergence, one that will change the role of the [mobile phone] handset and turn it into a communications and media platform with the same range of functionality as a PC. (Wireless Watch, November 15, 2005, para. 1, as published in the online publication The Register)

Software giant Microsoft is also responding, "to the challenge from internet companies like Google - to deliver services over multiple platforms seamlessly, including mobile handsets and televisions" (Wireless Watch, November 15, 2005, para. 10, as published in The Register).

In 2015, communications technology will be predominantly portable, wireless, and internet capable, with powerful computing capabilities. Taken together with the trend towards using the internet as the primary news medium, the news of tomorrow will mostly be delivered on small, portable, digital, and wireless devices.

Big Media and Small Media in the Global Internet News Mix

The internet-dominated news media of 2015, will provide a plethora of choices to news consumers, offering almost every imagineable niche perspective on the news and issues of the day. However, the large purveyors of news content to mass audiences will present more homogenized offerings, as the twin economic forces of lower production costs and global competition, reinforce and heighten the longstanding trend of convergence of and between the media giants.

As a result of the explosion of the web in the mid 1990s, there has been an acceleration towards web news narrowcasting, with many thousands of content-rich web sites now available to more than ten per cent of the world?s population:

Estimates suggest that the number of Internet users around the globe has surged from 4.4 million in 1991; to more than 600 million in 2002. Thus, the global penetration rate of the internet has increased from less than 0.1 per cent in 1991; to over 10 per cent of the total world population in 2002. Projections for 2004 place the number of global internet users between 700 million and 945 million, which translates to a global penetration rate between 11 per cent and 15 per cent. (Chen & Wellman, 2004, p. 40)

"On the web, there are some thirty-two thousand news outlets - and that is not counting all the sites that primarily feature other content, but also offer a portal to news" (Piller, 2000, as cited by Scott, 2005, p. 97). Given the continued high growth rates in internet usage cited above, it is safe to assume that the number of news sites has also grown considerably in the last five years.

For example, the author of this paper is the founder of two daily online news services which have been operating for less than two years each: Newsdaily Canada (Newsdaily.ca) and PEJ News (PEJ.org). These two specialty daily news sites are staffed entirely by volunteers and cost just $250 CDN dollars each, per year, to sustain.

The cost of entry into the news business has fallen dramatically, as has the economic value of much news content. "The exact same content that news outlets sell in print publications has been disseminated so widely by so many producers and aggregators that its value has been driven to zero. The media oligopoly held in place by expensive production and geographic markets did not fly online" (Scott, 2005, p. 97).

As in the early days of newspapers, many distinct news outlets can now be found online. It is reasonable to assume that this phenomenon will continue for the next ten years, with many more voices being added to the news mix. Since these online news services are available globally through the World Wide Web, to over ten per cent of the world population, one may conclude that news audiences will continue to differentiate into many niches, just as television channels have specialized as the number of TV choices has expanded.

Ben Scott, in his Contemporary History of Digital Journalism (2005), is skeptical that small outlets will have a meaningful impact on society as a whole: "The reality is that the empty [Internet] promise of a revitalized public sphere has given way to an even more tightly integrated oligopoly of commercial news networks."

Scott spends much of this article discussing and detailing the ever-increasing convergence at all levels of large media corporations, and the resulting increased homogenization of voices across media, corporations, and mainstream news content.

He observes that the decentralized network technology of the internet has ironically led to a centralization of news production across media platforms, with ever-increasing gatekeeping, and a decline in the diversity of voices.

Scott states that these trends are largely the result of a profit-motivated media industry that eschews public service in favour of shareholder value, by limiting voices (and paycheques) through central management and central news production.

While generally decrying the negative impacts to public discourse of online journalism, Scott does express some optimism:

There does remain a great deal of hope and promise in a second tier of independent and alternative information providers - from citizen journalism to web logs to online community organizations - but in the context of a reinstated, strengthened media monopoly, it must be a guarded hope, not a triumphant one. (Scott, 2005, p. 122)

The low cost of entry into the internet news market, and the rapidly rising number of global users, will encourage a rich ecology of small, internet media outlets in the year 2015. While major corporations will continue to dominate and homogenize their content, the plethora of small outlets will offer a wide diversity of perspectives.

By 2015, many online news services will optimize their news presentation to the majority, who will be using small, portable devices, such as "cell phones", to consume their daily news. What will be theimpact on news reporting and society of these small screen, wireless and 24/7 media?

How the Mobile Internet Will Shape Tomorrow?s News

People read the web differently than print, as noted by Richard van der Wurff in his paper, Impacts of the Internet on Newspapers in Europe (2005):

Editors-in-chief or project managers responsible for online newspapers believe that online articles should be shorter, presented in an abbreviated "news item" style, and linked to other online features. Other studies discovered that users prefer or use electronic newspapers to acquire immediate information on global issues, and to survey headlines, while printed newspapers are used for local and background information. (Chyi and Lasorsa, 1999; Mueller and Kamerer, 1995)

This abbreviated web-reading style is likely to be exacerbated by 2015, when a large number of individuals, if not the majority, obtain their news from internet sources on small, mobile and wireless electronic readers.

Ironically, although the limitless expanse of cyberspace allows for a virtually unlimited depth of news coverage, smaller news stories have been the predominant feature of commercial online news services.

Most commercial providers are hamstrung in their abilities to offer comprehensive coverage because they do not do that as a rule, and it would mean pointing readers toward other media outlets, the last thing a capitalist news organization wants to do. (Scott, 2005, p. 110)

The impact on public discourse and the public sphere of such bite-sized news snippets, easily consumed before racing on to the next story or link, will be negative. As well, the portable, wireless nature of these internet appliances, will ensure that much news consumption will be done "on the run," in the midst of other activites, much like the distracted cellular phone calls of the modern world.

Also degrading the quality of online journalism, will be the dual forces of news immediacy and global competition trumping accuracy in fast-breaking news stories, such as was seen in the early online reports of September 11, 2001: "The pressure to keep up with the events led online newspapers to make mistakes. More troublesome is that newspapers did not formally rectify their mistakes, but simply removed the wrong statements from the web" (Wurff, 2005, p. 110).

Concluding Observations: The Divergent News World of 2015

As the biannual survey data from the Pew Research Center clearly shows, there is a revolution in the news media taking place. The clear winner of audience share is the relatively new online media, while there has been a dramatic decline in newspaper readers and television news viewers over the last ten years.

When these trends are coupled with the news habits of young Americans versus older cohorts, and the fact that all other media forms are migrating onto the internet (e.g. internet radio), it is clear that the internet (and perhaps television) will dominate the news market of 2015.

At the same time, we can expect a difference in the electronic hardware of the future used to view internet-based news. In most cases, the new form factor will be small, portable and wireless, with internet connectivity, like modern video cell phones, facilitating continuous access to the news anywhere, anytime.

The properties of these evolving online media will, in turn, have an impact on the reporting of the news itself, and also on the consumers of internet news services, and society at large.

Short news stories, short and distracted attention spans, less accurate, time-rushed reporting, and homogenization of voices and coverage in the mainstream media, do not bode well for public discourse and the serious, in-depth treatment of important news stories and issues, among opinion leaders and the public alike.

On the other hand, the low cost of entry and production, instant availability of breaking news, wide spectrum of news perspectives and analysis, interactive features of the internet media, and limitless space for story detail, in theory allow for a more informed and wide public debate on all the issues of the day.

Societal consensus, however, may be harder than ever to achieve, as audiences break down into ever-smaller news niches, in ever-widening geographic circles spanning the planet.

Subcultures of opinion and perspective may find themselves intellectually distanced further and further from each other, less able to understand one another, and less interested in dialogue, as each group become immersed in a narrower and narrower view of the issues of the day, seeking out agreeable opinions anywhere on the planet, feeling less need to dialogue and reach consensus with those in their own geographic communities.

At the same time, the mainstream of published opinion is likely to narrow, and the influence of the global media giants likely to continue to grow, as the new technologies and economics force commercial news corporations into ever-larger international mergers, with a globally-smaller workforce of journalists and editors, providing a narrower and more homogeneous viewpoint, for an ever-more-globalized mass audience.

The impact in 2015 on local, regional, national, and international communities, of online news optimized for small, portable information devices, is divergent. We will find both a weakening of the exclusive gatekeeping functions of mass media, ironically alongside an increased global influence of the world-spanning media mega-corporations.

More information diversity and depth will be available in a rich media ecology spanning the planet, and yet the mass of the world's population is likely to experience a thinning of perspective, as the global mass media moves further towards increased homogenization of opinion expressed in easily-digested news bits.

It is unclear how these divergent trends will reconcile and ultimately impact our increasingly small, global village.

It will be the best of times. It will be the worst of times.

References

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Chen, W., & Wellman, B. (2004). The global digital divide - within and between countries. IT & Society, 1(7), 39-45.

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The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. (2004). Online news audience larger, more diverse / news audiences increasingly politicized / Pew Research Center biennial news consumption survey. Retrieved 12/2, 2005 from http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=834

The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. (2005). Public more critical of press, but goodwill persists / online newspaper readership countering print losses. Retrieved 11/12, 2005 from http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=248

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