The rise of online ad dollars

Internet ads accounted for 8 percent of total ad revenue in in 2005. The number jumped to17 percent in 2009. Ken Doctor reports:

...digital marketing, with better targeting being introduced around the clock, keeps pulling dollars away from traditional media — TV, newspapers, radio, and magazines. TV ($26.2 billion) and newspapers ($24.6 billion) are still ahead of Internet, but cable (at $20.4 billion) and TV networks (at $15.5 billion) are below. Radio pulls in $14 billion, while consumer magazines take in $10 billion and trades $7.5 billion.

The 119 words you can't say on (Tribune) radio

Randy Michaels is a list maker.

The CEO of Tribune Co. drew up a list of 119 words and phrases he never again wants to hear on the company's talk radio station, WGN-AM (720), and has asked staff to rat each other out if any of the banned "newsspeak" gets uttered on air.

The list is a mix of AP style and personal irritants. Most examples are perfectly reasonable, such as bans on the meaningless "going forward" and cliche "perfect storm." Some are oddities, such as banning "white stuff," which I assume is used to refer to snow. Then there are words that no one wants to use but are sometimes unavoidable, such as "reportedly" and "officials."

The whole list is here.

(found via Romenesko)

Where we're getting our news - and what we're doing with it

Most people continue to get their news from local and national television broadcasts, but the Internet continues to surge as a source, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The survey finds that on a typical day 61 percent of people get at least some of their news online (weather reports are the top subject matter for online consumption).

The survey also claims that online is now the third most popular platform for news, behind local and national television. The finding isn't clear cut, however, since Pew splits local and national newspapers into two categories. Depending on the amount of overlap, the number of newspaper readers could be as high as 67 percent, although it's probably less. Online comes in at 61 percent and radio is fifth, with 54 percent of people getting some amount of news there during a typical day.

From the survey:

More than half of American adults (56%) say they follow the news "all or most of the time," and another quarter (25%) follow the news at least "some of the time." Asked specifically about their news habits on "a typical day," the results are striking -- 99% of American adults say that on a typical day, they get news from at least one of these media platforms: a local or national print newspaper, a local or national television news broadcast, radio or the internet.

Only local and national TV news, the latter if you combine cable and network, are more popular platforms than the internet for news. And most Americans use a combination of both online and offline sources. On a typical day:

• 78% of Americans say they get news from a local TV station.
• 73% say they get news from a national network such as CBS or cable TV station such as CNN or Fox News.
• 61% say they get some kind of news online.
• 54% say they listen to a radio news program at home or in the car.
• 50% say they read news in a local newspaper.
• 17% say they read news in a national newspaper such as the New York Times or USA Today.

The survey shows that online news consumption is often complimentary to more traditional media sources because it provides consumers with different experiences, such as the ability to get a quick news update (weather, headline, sports score, etc.), share an article or link, or offer an opinion in a comments section. Many people also find news updates on their computer's home page, in their email box, on Twitter feeds, and on social media sites - "more than 8 in 10 online news consumers get or share links in emails," the survey finds.

Traditional sources are less interactive and more reflective. They continue to be the headwaters of news, with their original reporting flowing out onto the web to be shared or hashed over in pools of social networks.

Interestingly, these social networks appear to be less interested in hashing over local news. From the survey findings:

The most popular online news subjects are the weather (followed by 81% of internet news users), national events (73%), health and medicine (66%), business and the economy (64%), international events (62%), and science and technology (60%).

Asked what subjects they would like to receive more coverage, 44% said scientific news and discoveries, 41% said religion and spirituality, 39% said health and medicine, 39% said their state government, and 38% said their neighborhood or local community.

*Edited

A tough first half

Some ugly numbers for traditional media in the first half of 2009, courtesy of the Vocus Media Database. According to the company's tally, 123 news television shows were canceled along with 186 radio shows, most of them in smaller markets. The magazine industry saw 154 launches and 556 closings.

Major daily newspapers have been shuttered as well, but much of the contraction has been seen in the bureaus. From the Vocus media blog:

The newspaper industry was hit by significant closings in the first half of 2009 (the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Baltimore Examiner and Seattle Post-Intelligencer all ceased publishing a print edition), but legions of daily newspapers haven’t folded. The vulnerability of the newspaper industry cannot be measured only by the number of shuttered papers, however. Newspapers across the country also closed 110 bureaus, according to the Vocus Database. Some of the bureaus were in Washington, D.C., but many were in areas close to the parent newspapers, a trend that would never have occurred during more robust times.

Night of the awards

The Los Angeles Press Club announced its awards last night. The full list of winners is here.

A Sirius problem

No, satellite radio doesn't make enough money either. Sirius XM is about to file for bankruptcy.

Where we get our news

The number of Americans turning to the Internet as a preferred source for news on the presidential campaigns is up 23 percent from four years ago - 33 percent in 2008 compared to 10 percent in 2004. The same poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, finds 29 percent of Americans read newspapers for campaigns information, up one percent from 2004 but still below the Internet number.

(Nevertheless, newspaper circulation continues to drop.)

As for the other media, television watching was down - though it continues to dominate as the top source for campaign news - and magazine reading and radio listening were up.

There is one clear weakness in the findings: One of the media sources is not like the others. The Internet is not a form of production but a delivery system. What exactly are people looking at online? A local newspaper? A national magazine? Are they listening to NPR podcasts or dowloading clips from the Daily Show? The footnote has a link that gives us some idea of how news consumers use the Internet, but not enough to disambiguate what proportion of the Internet audience is reading an online newspaper versus some alternative source.

Another interesting finding in the Pew survey is that cable news channels serve a much more partisan audience than other campaign news sources:

Among those who name the Fox News Channel as their main source for campaign news, 52% are Republicans and only 17% are Democrats. By contrast, among those who rely on MSNBC for their campaign news, 50% are Democrats and only 11% are Republicans. Similarly, CNN's campaign news audience is largely Democratic -- 45% are Democrats and 13% are Republicans

A plurality of newspaper readers are self-identified Democrats (41% Dem vs. 22% Rep vs. 34% independent). Fox News is by far the preferred source for Republicans while independents are almost evenly split between all of the news sources.

No TTP in the NYC

Nat Hentoff of the Village Voice writes to protest WNYC's recent decision to drop "To The Point" from its AM station.

(My conflicts here are clear, but I'll mention them anyway: I'm one of seven producers for TTP, and therefore keenly interested in getting back on the air in New York City, and I produced the show on Zimbabwe that Hentoff makes reference to.)