Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be like "trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons," a new consumer survey suggests.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism‘s annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday, contained an extensive look at habits of the estimated six in 10 Americans who say they get at least some news online during a typical day. On average, each person spends three minutes and four seconds per visit to a news site.
About 35% of online news consumers said they have a favourite site they check each day. Of that group, only 19% said they would be willing to pay for news online, and 80% of respondents said they never or hardly ever click on ads.
"If we move to some pay system, that shift is going to have to surmount significant consumer resistance," said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the project, part of the Pew Research Center.
Despite a lot of choices, traffic on news sites tends to be concentrated on the biggest–Yahoo, MSNBC, CNN, AOL and The New York Times.
"There was this view that we’re retreating into our own world of niche sites and that’s not true," Rosenstiel said.
That offers a glimmer of hope for establishing a pay system if operators of the biggest sites could somehow agree on how to do it, he said. The survey found that if forced to make a choice, consumers prefer some kind of subscription service to a pay-as-you-go plan.
The Wall Street Journal requires readers to pay for content and The New York Times plans to charge for full access to its site, introducing a metered system next year.
The Associated Press last month announced a new business unit, AP Gateway, designed to develop and promote revenue-producing products. The AP, for instance, will charge for an application it is developing for use on the iPad, Apple’s tablet computer.
While consumers may seem reluctant to pay for news, they’re more likely to pay for the functionality of news products on various devices, including smart phones, said Jane Seagrave, senior vice-president and chief revenue officer at The Associated Press.
"I’m more hopeful now than I ever have been," Seagrave said. "There seems to be a broad understanding that there is a value to professional journalism that is at risk right now."
Pew’s survey also noted how news habits are changing rapidly. Blogging is declining in frequency, one quarter of Americans now say they get some news on their mobile phones and people are looking for news more frequently on social websites, the survey found.
Beyond the online activity, the study found that cable news, led by Fox News Channel, seemed to be the only sector of the news industry thriving.
Newspaper advertising revenue fell 26% in 2009 compared to the year before, the study said. Local TV and radio ad revenue were both off 22%. Network television ad revenue was down 8%.
Network news division resources are down more than half since the late 1980s, and, according to Rosenstiel, newspaper spending on reporting and editing has fallen roughly 30% over the past decade.
