Few university students reading newspapers online

Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 2002 by Bressers, Bonnie, Bergen, Lori

Students at a Midwestern university reported that they were much more likely to read the campus paper and other newspapers in print rather than online newspapers.

Dramatic increases in access and use have made the Internet a household word since the first graphical Web browser was commercially released in 1993. The number of Americans with home computers increased from 36 percent to 59 percent between 1995 and 2000, and the number who go online grew from 21 percent in 1996 to 54 percent in 2000.(1)

Newspapers joined the scramble to go online, thinking they could reverse circulation declines by building a new base of young and computer-savvy readers. They also believed they could reduce production and distribution costs, develop new advertising revenue potential and protect their advertising base (particularly classified ads) from a twin threat: the computer's innate ability to sort and search massive databases quickly and the point-and-click technology that connects buyers to products. The growth in the number of U.S. newspapers online has been dramatic - from 20 in 1994 to 3,419 in 2000.2

Newspaper circulations have been declining for three decades, especially among young adults. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that only 26 percent of 18-24 year-olds read a newspaper, spending only about nine minutes a day with it.3 Another study found that 43 percent of the 16-29 year-olds say they could "get along easily" without newspapers.4

The increasingly ubiquitous presence of newspapers online notwithstanding, we know relatively little about what it takes to attract the elusive young reader. Little systematic analysis has been done on how this computer-savvy generation uses the Internet and online newspapers. This research is the first in a series of longitudinal examinations of Internet use and other media use by 400 college students at a Midwestern university as reported in April 1999. The study establishes a baseline record of Internet use, online newspaper use and other media use by college-age adults to see how online newspapers can better meet the needs of this important demographic group as their media use habits form. We present the results of a telephone survey of college students about their use of traditional and online newspapers, other media and the Internet. We compare Internet use by gender and report responses to open-ended questions about information-seeking behaviors among the students. Finally, we suggest how traditional and online newspapers can better meet the needs of this demographic group.

Literature Review

College students and adolescents are heavily wired. Jupiter Communications reported in 1999 that 85 percent of all college students and 75 percent of all adolescents use the Internet,5 exceeding use by any other demographic group. Jupiter also predicts that college students will spend more than $4 billion online annually by 2002.(6)

This technically savvy demographic group also has abundant campus resources, making computers and Internet access pervasive:

More and more college dorms have Ethernet connections supporting fast Internet access wired into every room. Libraries, student unions, classroom buildings and dorms typically have computer clusters where students can use PCs to access the Internet. Nearly every major campus has a computer center where the PC-less can go check their e-mail.7

We might expect that college students would be the new technically oriented readership that newspaper companies had hoped would support online editions and advertisers. But Weir examined patterns of adoption for electronic newspapers and found that "usage of the electronic newspapers is not correlated with use of the Internet (or) knowledge and experience with computers."8 Despite our assumption that college students strive to try new products and be among the first to do things, Weir found that innovativeness does not significantly predict online newspaper use, leading to the "presumption that such new media products are not considered to be cutting-edge technologies as much as more efficient sources of news and information by the people who use them."

In other words, college students are unlikely to discover value in newspapers just because the content traditionally presented on news print is presented on a computer screen. Online newspaper content is changing, but will it change enough to attract a younger audience?

What Do Online Newspapers Offer?

Pavlik says online news content is evolving through three stages: The first stage involves repurposing print newspaper content for the online edition. In stage two, content is augmented with interactive features such as search engines, hyperlinks and some customization of what news the user receives. Stage three is characterized by the creation of original content designed specifically for the medium.9

But from the earliest days of the Web, new media analysts have criticized newspapers for failing to rid themselves of the "print" mentality and, thus, failing to use the unique attributes of the new medium.