• by Bill McCloskey , January 15, 2002

When I lived in California I had a weekly ritual that kept me sane, being far away as I was from my New York home. The ritual almost made up for the fact that I couldn’t find a decent bagel in the entire state of California. (Just for the record - for those on the left coast – there is no such thing as a sour dough bagel, and while you can put many things on a bagel, sprouts aren’t one of them.)

My ritual was to get up early on Sunday and head down to the one store in town that carried the Sunday New York Times. Ahh… the Sunday Times! Is there any pleasure more fulfilling that lying in bed on Sunday, drinking a small cask of coffee, and reading the Sunday Times? None, none, none.

The reason I’m waxing so poetic about the Sunday Times is that I just got back from Washington where I was a guest speaker at the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). This is the trade organization that does all sorts of good works on behalf of America’s newspapers and in this particular case was having a meeting to educate its members on various rich media technologies as well as let them confab about the lack of respect newspapers, and in particular, online newspapers get from media buyers.

A totally unjustified lack of respect too, if we can believe much of the data coming out these days. Take a look at the UCLA study that’s been making the rounds. First of all, a quick study of the latest online population numbers: depending on which study you read more people are going online than ever before. In fact, 72% of American households are online. By October 2001, the U.S. Internet population had grown 15% for the year: from 100 million in 2000 to 115 million. October itself had the biggest increase (4%) of new Internet users for the year. And Broadband numbers (despite churn) are up to their highest levels ever: 21 million households. There is no doubt, more and more people are coming online.

So what happens to other media when all these folks come online? Well, for one, they watch a lot less TV, read fewer newspapers and magazines, and listen to a lot less radio. And the longer they are online, the less TV, Radio, and magazines are consumed.

And what do all these people like to do once they get online? Subtract things like email, and mindless browsing, and the number one thing they like to do is read news. And, again, the more they are online, the more news they like reading. Newbies spend about 3.4% of their media time reading news. Experienced users spend 6.4%.

Digging a little further we discover something else that’s interesting. When asked what’s very important and extremely important about the Internet, 70% of people surveyed report that information is very and extremely important. Compare this to Entertainment, which only 19% of those polled felt was very or extremely important. The Internet, it turns out, is not an Entertainment medium after all. It’s an information medium. And no one does information better than newspapers.

In fact, by any stretch of the imagination, online newspapers should be in the catbird seat when it comes to the Internet. The Internet could bring back the golden age of newspapers. Readers are loyal and online versions of local newspapers have the trust of their readership. Seems to me like it would be a great place to buy Internet Advertising.

And further, the people who sell online newspaper sponsorships and ads have been in this business a long time and know what they are doing. As I strolled around the meeting at the NAA, it wasn’t unusual to find Media Sellers who had been with the same publication for 12 years. Try to find anyone in the online advertising space who can say that!

So, lets wrap up: loyal readers, trusted sources, experienced sellers, and a hot destination for more and more Americans. So where’s the disconnect?

Some of the NAA attendees think it is because today’s media buyers didn’t grow up with newspapers the way their parents did: they don’t read newspapers, don’t understand newspapers, don’t talk about newspapers, and don’t think about newspapers.

I don’t know about that. But I do know that it’s time for some media buyers to start getting a little online news print on their hands and spend a little more time curled up in bed with their favorite local rag. For whom does the pendulum swing? It swings for thee.

-- Bill McCloskey is Founder and CEO of Emerging Interest, an organization dedicated to educating the Internet advertising and marketing industry about rich media and other emerging technologies.