Are newspapers in danger of being replaced by other technology?

There is good news and bad news, according a recently released report from The Readership Institute.

The bad news first: For young people, newspaper readership - when measured by the three factors of frequency, time and completeness -  has dropped among those aged 18-24.

The good news: In other age groups, especially those 65 and older, readership has strengthened.

“This underlines a key challenge for newspapers, since, historically, younger adults do not become appreciably better newspaper readers as they age,” said The Readership Institute’s Mary Nesbitt, co-author of the report.

Nesbitt reported the study’s findings during the Colorado Press Convention’s state of the industry address in February. The Readership Institute’s survey involved more than 3,000 randomly selected adults in 100 impact newspaper markets.

The survey found that “a higher percentage of the population reads the local daily newspaper than it did in 2002,” the date of an earlier Readership Institute study. “While both the 2002 and 2003 surveys include about 3,000 randomly selected respondents, this year’s survey includes 3.3 percent fewer non-readers than in 2002. This is a statistically significant difference, indicating that more people read the local daily newspaper than (they) did 18 months ago,” she said.

Web traffic low

Another interesting finding of the study tracks readers’ infrequent use of newspaper Web sites. The survey found that more than 70 percent of respondents never visited their newspaper’s Web site. Fewer than 10 percent visited within the past week.

But if it is any consolation, the demographics of those who do visit newspaper Web sites are good.

Another Internet-use study, commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America and conducted by MORI Research Inc., points to “a power-user audience of at-work Internet users.”

Online newspaper users are 20 percent more likely to have college degrees, 21 percent more likely to be employed, have a mean income of $70,000 and spend double the amount of time online as compared to general Internet users, according to an NAA publication’s account of the MORI study.

“But, for those Internet users who aren’t using newspaper sites, half say they are simply not interested in using the Web for local news and entertainment information - the print edition is their choice for local news,” the publication reports.

Finding local news

But how to find local news? Search engines such as Google are increasingly more important in “localizing” reports. The automated grouping process of Google News, for example, lets users access news and photos from thousands of sources worldwide.

In this case, these news accounts are selected entirely by computer algorithms, even if they cover a local story. And with my apologies to Tip O’Neill, all news is local.

These news aggregator sites pose yet another challenge, however: Who owns the information?

Tom Curley, president and chief executive officer of The Associated Press, said that question may have to be answered by the legal system.

Curley, who shared the podium with Nesbitt during the CPA address, identified intellectual property rights and how they clash with Internet distribution as one of the greatest concerns for the AP.

“In every meeting I go to, there are issues around piracy and threats to our revenue stream,” he said. The AP will seek legal remedies with publications that use AP content without permission, he said.

But somebody has to create the content before it can hit any search engine or be read by anyone, either online or off. And that is probably the best news for all of us in the industry that see us as hunters and gatherers of local content.

Until someone creates a robot that can cover a murder trial, report on a wrestling meet or figure out what the planning commission is trying to do, I think we are safe. That is, until someone replaces our readers with technology.