API report about how Americans consume news has some surprises

You have to know your audience if you want to speak intelligently to them. That’s why reports like The Personal News Cycle: How Americans choose to get their news by the American Press Institute’s Media Insight Project can be so fascinating.

The report, released this week, is based on a “nationally representative telephone survey of 1,492 adults conducted from January 9 through February 16.”

The survey finds that a lot of cherished ideas about how people consume news is obsolete. Here’s a big chunk from the overview:

Contrary to the conventional wisdom about media consumption dividing along generational or political lines, a new survey finds that the nature of the news itself — the topic and speed of the story — largely determines where people go to learn about events and the path they take to get there.

The findings also suggest that some long-held beliefs about people relying on just a few primary sources for news are now obsolete.

In contrast to the idea that one generation tends to rely on print, another on television and still another the web, the majority of Americans across generations now combine a mix of sources and technologies to get their news each week … Where people go for news, moreover, depends significantly on the topic of the story — whether it is sports or science, politics or weather, health or arts — and on the nature of the story — whether it is a fast-moving event, a slower-moving trend, or an issue that the person follows passionately.

The data also challenge another popular idea about the digital age, the notion that with limitless choices people follow only a few subjects in which they are interested and only from sources with which they agree — the idea of the so-called “filter bubble.”

And one more quote, because I think this is the real take-away: “The data from the survey, which was designed to probe what adults distinguish most in their news consumption in the digital age, offer a portrait of Americans becoming increasingly comfortable using technology in ways that take advantage of the strengths of each medium and each device.”

What that tells me is that we have to think about the strengths—and weaknesses—of each device that we’re creating content for as we create that content.

The report is huge. Full disclosure: I haven’t read the whole thing yet, though I do recommend the first section after the overview, How Americans get their news, which talks about behavior of news consumers: How often they look for news, how often they delve deeper than headlines, when they do those things, and so on.