Yesterday’s News
Where did you get your news yesterday, and how much time did you spend getting it?
According to the latest survey from the Pew Research Center (the best source for such stuff, IMHO), if you’re an average American you spent 70 minutes gathering your news, allocated as follows:
Newspapers (specifically, the printed variety) continue to take it on the chin. Since 2006, the percent who read a newspaper in print “yesterday” declined from 38% to 26%.
Altogether, 44% of Americans say they went online in some fashion “yesterday” to get their news — everything from news websites to cell phones, email social nets, and podcasts.
For in-depth reporting, the Wall St Journal and NY Times still significantly outdistance the pack.
As usual, this Pew research is full of data on Americans’ news seeking, perceptions of a wide range of news sources, and news preferences by political orientation.
A “must read” report for anyone working on the communications side of your nonprofit.
Tom
P.S. If you had difficulty accessing the “GoldMail” demonstration using the links in yesterday’s email feed, please go directly to the post on The Agitator website, where the links will work fine. It’s well worth the visit … we think GoldMail is a quite powerful tool, and the folks behind it are making a free offer to Agitator’s nonprofit subscribers.
3 responses to “Yesterday’s News”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
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Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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This graph sucks! The average time spent with each news source seems to be analyzed as a metric of the popularity and relative influence of each source. However, as should be obvious, these are different forms of media and the amount of time that it takes to glean information from each of these sources is wildly different. Is it really surprising that the average tv news viewing time is slightly over 30 minutes? Does this account for the 8 minutes of commercials per hour that you must sit through to see a regular “30 minute” news broadcast? Beyond that, the conflation of online and print newspapers makes the (already difficult to interpret) stacked area graph completely misleading. Assuming online and print sources are part of a general category “news in print” then the proportion of time spent at each news source is roughly static. The only number that you can actually draw any conclusions from is the total amount of time spent gathering news, and the fluctuation of this number over time is not large and it isn’t really trending. In short, most of the conclusions that this graph seems to suggest are unsupported by the data. We should expect better.
**above post should read “8 minutes of commercials per half hour”**
Now if only the news was worth spending that much time on.