We’re very excited to welcome Maya Dukmasova as a guest blogger this weekend. Maya is an intern with Zogby International and a junior at the University of Rochester, working on a dual B.A. in Philosophy and Religion. Originally from Saint Petersburg, Russia, she currently lives in Syracuse, NY and will be spending the coming semester studying philosophy in Paris, France. She also writes an intependent blog with interviews and impressions of ‘Life in a New Russia’ www.newspblife.com . Thanks Maya!
According to a May 29, 2009 Zogby Interactive Survey, things aren’t looking so grim for the newspaper business. The expansion of news aggregators and blogs on the Internet in recent years has accompanied a decline in readership of daily national and local papers. Our survey revealed that the trustworthiness of traditional national newspapers is now significantly lower than that of the Internet (15.8% to 37.2%, respectively). But, when we asked respondents where they get their news once they are online, the majority of them in every demographic category ranked national newspaper websites as “Very Important.”
When we asked which source they would choose if they had to get the news from just one place, the majority of respondents chose the Internet, with television coming in second (55.9% and 20.7%, respectively). Newspapers came in as the fist choice for just 10.2% of respondents.
The Internet came in first in the reliability category among the majority of our demographic categories. In most groups, newspapers and television came in second, except for Republicans and Conservatives who chose the radio as the second most reliable news source.
Respondents did not deem social networking websites or blogs as very important sources of news, but national newspaper websites came in as somewhat or very important news sources among all groups except for Republicans and Conservatives (42.6% and 41.9% of whom said these websites were not at all important, respectively), those over 65, Born Agains, and NASCAR fans.
So here the newspaper industry is faced with a paradox: Most find the Internet more trustworthy than printed newspapers yet see national newspapers’ websites as the most important sources for news. If the same articles by the same writers appear in both, how do we account for such paradoxical public opinion? Does the guise of the Internet inspire public confidence? If so, the nation’s major newspapers can look forward to long years of prosperity ahead, in a digital format of course.
Katy Uncategorized international, internet, religion, television, war, work, zogby