• by Ben Frederick , Staff Writer @mp_benfred, June 16, 2016

For those of you wondering why the New York Times threatened to use the big guns against ad-blocker users, look no further than the recent State of the News Media report from Pew Research, released this week. The report highlights the major pain points of the journalism industry -- though at present pretty much every point is a pain point for the news business.

2015 was the worst year for journalism since the recession, with many outlets losing print and digital subscribers. But out of all this pressure on the industry, diamonds are emerging -- some of them in mobile.

Out of the digital native sites tracked, about three in four saw audience growth in the past year, and much of that growth was driven by mobile. For most of the outlets studied (print and digital native), mobile traffic outpaced desktop traffic.

“Increasingly, the data suggest that the impact these technology companies are having on the business of journalism goes far beyond the financial side, to the very core elements of the news industry itself,” states the report. For a while, news outlets built news apps in an attempt to catch some of the mobile traffic. Now, though, those efforts have mostly been funneled towards mobile optimization of Web sites.

As publishers finally start to figure out that mobile is a unique channel and not an extension of print, TV or desktop, their strategies are shifting. However, “it will be important to keep in mind that the result is about far more than who captures the upper hand or the revenue base. It is determining how and with what kinds of storytelling Americans learn about the issues and events facing society and the world,” states the report.