U.S. News Consumers Are Media Hunter/Gatherers

(MoneyWatch)  Amidst the steady flow of polls and surveys, one meta-trend stands out about how Americans are adjusting to what some call "information overload," but what news junkies might call Nirvana.

We are becoming a nation of hunter-gatherers when it comes to finding our news.

This becomes apparent from the data in the latest report from the Pew Research Center, which finds that 92 percent of U.S. respondents say they rely on multiple channels -- local or national TV, radio, local or national newspapers, websites, blogs and more -- to gather news on a typical day.

The implications of this evolution in news consumption for media companies include the growing significance of partnerships and aggregation, on the one hand -- as well as attempts to grow passionate niche audiences on the other.

The first two strategies (partnerships and aggregation) are necessary to harvest enough visitors; the third (nurturing passion) recognizes that audience loyalty will be increasingly important going forward.

Furthermore, readers' behavioral pattern of grazing for news takes place across demographic buckets -- age, gender, socioeconomic status. As Pew explains, "In the digital era, news has become omnipresent. Americans access it in multiple formats on multiple platforms on myriad devices. The days of loyalty to a particular news organization on a particular piece of technology in a particular form are gone."

Almost half of the people surveyed, 46 percent, said they get news from anywhere from four to six media platforms per day.

The Internet, meanwhile, has passed newspapers to become the third-most-popular source for news, behind local and national TV stations at present.

Perhaps most revealing is this statistic -- just 7 percent of American consumers report getting their news from one outlet per day.

"The process Americans use to get news is based on foraging and opportunism," states the report. "They seem to access news when the spirit moves them or they have a chance to check up on headlines. At the same time, gathering the news is not entirely an open-ended exploration for consumers, even online where there are limitless possibilities for exploring news. While online, most people say they use between two and five online news sources and 65% say they do not have a single favorite website for news."

Stretching to meet the needs of these news consumers presents, of course, a difficult challenge for traditional media companies. You can't be everything to everyone. But the data can be read to suggest that providing a portal-like entry to headlines, which most do reasonably well already, is essential, while also developing deeper wells of specialized content that ensure brand uniqueness.

Anyway you cut it, it's a tough time to be a content executive!

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