Blog 6 -- Some Eye-Opening Stats

In the study on audience trends from the Pew Research Center, several key facts jump out, most of which revolve around the Internet.

We have constantly been told that newspaper readership is declining and that more and more people are getting their news online. These statistics, then, have little shock value.

What is much more interesting is that online readership is increasing more and more slowly. According to the study, the amount of people who get their news online three or more times per week rose only 2 percentage points in the last two years, from 29 to 31 percent. In fact, the growth of the Internet since 2000 has been much slower than I thought.

I first believed that a possible explanation for this is that many of the new Web users are from older generations. These people are more loyal to traditional newspapers and might shy away from getting their news online.

However, statistics show that premise is completely false. The 18-24 age bracket actually made the smallest increase in online news readership in the years 2000-2006. This young group's online readership grew a minuscule 3.4 percent, from 29 percent to 30 percent. In contrast, the group aged 50-64 grew 63.2 percent, from 19 percent to 31 percent.

In other words, not only did the supposedly computer-illiterate Baby Boomers grow as an online audience nearly 20 times more than the YouTube generation, but more Baby Boomers overall get their news from the Web.

For me, this fact is stunning. Consider how much online advertising is geared towards younger readers, and how major Internet companies constantly try to stay "hip," or with the times (ie Google shelling out $1.7 billion for YouTube). The reality is that if you marketed 401Ks and Caribbean cruises, you would actually be reaching a larger (and probably richer) audience.

What does it eventually mean? Considering the fact that younger users will always be more in tune with new trends than older users, it may not be incredibly significant. But in an age when web sites are obsessed with courting younger readers, media companies might want to take a look at marketing some lawn chairs.