News Users 2009

This report analyzes results of Outsell’s third News Users study, our unique tracking of online and offline news reading preferences. It shows how preferences have (and haven’t) changed over time, and pinpoints which ones are on the way to becoming habits. Most reports on the news industry focus on publishers and how they are responding to a changing business environment, and at Outsell we regularly cover these core issues. Yet, fundamental to changes affecting publishers is the experience of readers and how changing reader preferences are driving basic business model change. This report focuses on the news consumer – the reader – to present the “demand-side” point of view. Data in the report is based on a survey of 2,787 US news consumers in July 2009, making it an elemental report on reader patterns key to driving strategic decision-making. The report contains data and analysis about:

- Key findings – seven main conclusions distilled from the survey;
- The rise in internet usage and fall in newspaper usage;
- News consumers’ willingness (or not) to pay for content;
- Online reading habits and primary sources for local news;
- How news consumers use Google to get their news;
- Power news users (those who look at news sources at least twice a day) and what they tell us about where regular news users are headed;
- Key areas where newspapers do – and don’t – retain strength;
- Essential actions for news publishers.