A New Model for News: Studying the Deep Structure of Young Adult News Consumptio

A New Model for News: Studying the Deep Structure of Young-Adult News Consumption

Associated Press | June 2008 | ISBN 2007065822 | English | 71 pages | PDF | 3.1 MB

In the spring of 2007, The Associated Press embarked on some business research that began quite routinely but would end up reshaping our thinking about journalism in the digital age. As part of our strategic planning process, we sought to understand news consumption patterns beyond what traditional market data and consumer surveys could tell us. We had a senior management retreat coming up, and we needed something more exciting than regional growth rates to stimulate discussion. An analyst on the planning staff suggested doing an “ethnography” of young adult consumers, and after a quick Google search to understand exactly what that meant, we decided to give it a try.

To be frank, our expectations were modest. We sought some real people to put a human face on the accelerating shift to online and mobile consumption of news around the world. We knew young people were at the leading edge of that movement and a cultural science study of their media habits sounded like fun.

In the end, it proved to be as transformative as it was fun. The human stories were only the start. From there, the professional anthropologists we commissioned to conduct the research created a model for news delivery that distilled the challenge to its essential elements.

Based on the observed behavior of the subjects in the study, four basic news entry points were identified as the main components of the subjects’ news diets: Facts, Updates, Back Story and Future Stories.

The essential finding: The subjects were overloaded with facts and updates and were having trouble moving more deeply into the background and resolution of news stories.