Remember what the year 2005 was supposed to be like when we were kids? Your childhood view may have varied from mine depending on age, but I definitely remember watching Back to the Future part 2 and eagerly anticipating the day that I could ride my hover board to school and drive a flying, time-traveling car. Unfortunately I'm STILL eagerly anticipating that day. It turns out that humans are not so great at predicting the future. Enter the REAL 2005, where we journalism students are apparently 100% sure that mass media has one foot in the grave. Soon, we say, every individiual will receive customized content thanks to the internet, marking the demise of mass media as we know it. My response: malarky (hogwash, if you will).
How different is the news overall today than it was twenty years ago? I personally prefer to gather my news online, but I seem to be in the minority. An annual report on American journalism called "The State of the News Media 2004" revealed that newspaper readership is declining, but certainly not in dramatic fashion. And a recent study released by Ball State University shows that television viewership is at an all-time high. However, network television news ratings are dropping. Network viewership is down in both rating points and share thanks to substantially more channels to choose from than ever before (more than 100 on average).
This graph, based on statistics from the Ball State study, shows computer usage is quite high, with Americans spending more time on the computer than anything but television. However, Howard I. Finberg points out that 18 to 24 year-olds have some of the lowest numbers for computer usage in his article "Our Complex Media Day". This leads me to believe that the generation most likely to push for a change aren't even spending as much time on the computer as older people who tend to get their news from more traditional media. Don't be get too excited while anticipating a big change in news presentation. I'd expect to see a flying car before I see a huge change in mass media.
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