News consumers divide their sources among 12 to 16 brands each week on average, including television, the Web, magazines, newspapers and radio. The McKinsey Group refers to it as “brand promiscuity.”
The McKinsey Group based the conclusions on an online survey of 2,100 Internet users in the United States. Elements of the survey included agree/disagree statements such as “I rely on a few specific news sources that I trust for facts,” and “I read blogs for news because they have an independent point of view.” Also, the survey asked respondents about their radio listening habits, Web surfing habits, etc.
Overall, respondents said they checked six television channels (cable and broadcast), three Web sites, one magazine, one newspaper and one radio station for news in a given week.
The survey also covered some interesting questions about what format is most “useful” (television and the Web), and the rationale for “choice of primary platform” (“It’s the easiest way to get news” led, followed by range of topic coverage, the ability to get news on demand and the ability to multitask while consuming news on the chosen platform).
In its conclusion, The McKinsey Group wrote “a multisource aggregator, for example, could step in to meet the consumers’ desire to volume and variety in online news….. Furthermore, media companies have a significant opportunity to develop niche news products for underserved consumer segments, particularly the digital cynics.” (Digital cynics are those who spend less time with news and “feel dissatisfied with most offline products.”)
Being the curious type, I started to wonder how many sources I use in a given week.
My personal list of current-events focused news media that I check in with at least weekly comes from about 20 brands (there’s some overlap there). This includes newspapers and newspaper Web sites (I’m counting those as one per brand), news-oriented radio stations, television news stations/shows and their affiliated sites.
Here goes:
Newspapers
The Washington Post (print, online, sometimes the radio station when it’s not all static)
The New York Times (online)
The Chicago Tribune (online)
The V.I. Source (online)
Radio
Washington Post Radio (see note about static above)
WTOP (Washington D.C. local news radio)
NPR
Television
CNN (cable, online)
CBS (evening news, sometimes online)
ABC (mostly online)
Weather Channel
NBC (Today show on in the background)
WUSA (evenings, Washington, D.C.)
The Daily Show and/or The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
Magazines
Newsweek
The Economist (sometimes I don’t get all the way through it)
Online
Slate
Salon
MSNBC.com
People (guilty pleasure)
A few notes on the list: I’m a bit more Web-oriented, and with television and radio stations I’m really a surfer.
I’m not counting a lot of news media in this list: I’m not counting the numerous blogs and news sources I read (or, ahem, skim) for the Online Publishing Update – the list would be about 90 if I added those in. Also, I do subscribe to some magazines that are not necessarily current-events oriented or weekly. I’m also not including things I read only very occasionally – magazines at the gym or at my Mom’s house, for example.
It was an interesting exercise. I’m sure I’m missing a lot of sources I do check regularly outside my job, but aren’t popping into mind at the moment. I noticed in this list that I’m national news-oriented in my consumption, perhaps a product of moving around so much in the past decade. That surprised me.
I also realize that, outside of work, my list hasn’t changed substantially in the past year. I remember learning years ago in graduate school that most people have a core list of Web sites they visit regularly – maybe 10 – and a new Web site has to be very compelling to break into that list.