Study confirms that Andy Griffith lives in Mayberry.com

By John Peeples

Confirming what AT readers already know, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reports on how Americans harvest their news. The Pew report is thought provoking:

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 FoxNews

·         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.

It appears that television still reigns supreme, once you include Fox News' eye popping numbers in an otherwise fading industry. What amazes this writer is that local newspapers enlighten only 50% of the population. (Then again, syndicated stories comprise 80% of the articles of the local rag in my small metropolitan market, so how relevant can such small market newspapers be?)

Is it a sign of the times, or a condemnation of the dearth of local media content that community newspapers should fall to a position of near irrelevance? I've always believed that, "all news is local." But, I'm starting to question that premise, and the Pew report substantiates the doubt:

Some 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commentary about it, or dissemination of news via social media. They have done at least one of the following: commenting on a news story (25%); posting a link on a social networking site (17%); tagging content (11%), creating their own original news material or opinion piece (9%), or Tweeting about news (3%)

Local television news is the province of the old or lazy, and syndicated radio news is an unavoidable addendum to the programming we want to hear. The old, passive news outlets surround and engulf us whether or not we pay attention to them. In contrast, one must purposefully log-on to an internet news site. It should not be surprising, therefore, that internet news sites boast a whopping 37% "participation rate." So, where do you think the "engaged" people are going for news?

The Mayberrys we grew up in have given way to the Mayberrys of the internet. Feel free to spread the news. (But don't tell Aunt Bee I said so.)

John Peeples