The objective of news is to inform an audience. Yet what happens when the audience has no desire to engage with the news? According to a recent study about news consumption in the US by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press, 34 percent of Americans aged under 25 say they get no news in a typical day.
Despite our 24/7 news culture, this figure is up from 25 percent in 1998.
The study calls this group the ‘disengaged’ and can be generalised as those who have a low interest in news and news consumption.
Perhaps this is because there are so many media channels out there to choose from and so much information to digest, that they choose to become disengaged. However, we also need to keep in mind that while people may say they do not listen to or read news, they take in enough information from a variety of sources to remain informed.
Interestingly, while social networking sites are very popular with young people, they have not become a major source of news. Just 10% of those with social networking profiles say they regularly get news from these sites. Maybe an opportunity exists to ‘network and news’?
As PR professionals, a core part of our business is supporting clients’ news opportunities, but are we sufficiently familiar with the needs of their target audiences and how they get their news? How do we engage the disengaged?
The Pew report shows that trends in US news consumption continue to move rapidly towards online news usage and away from traditional news, especially newspapers. That trend is less pronounced in New Zealand.
“Net-newsers” are the fastest growing group, depending on online sources for all of their information. Usually male, affluent and well educated, they read political blogs more than they watch network news and have a particularly strong interest in tech news.
At Network PR we have always known that relying on one high reader or viewer channel is not the most effective way to get to core audiences. Identifying and using the myriad of channels and developing customised approaches are far more effective.
For example, while hundreds of thousands might have read the Herald today, did every one of them read your story in the health section on page six? And if they did, was it really your target audience?
The term ‘target audience’ clearly needs to be examined carefully and their real life media consumption understood in order to reach them.