The days of "your Father's" News Consumption -- are over.
Gone are the days of wall-to-wall Newspaper reading. Gone are the days of incisive, on point, and well-balanced Sunday News analysis.
And gone are the days of an informed and motivated Electorate ...
The Audience for Digital News Videos
by Kenneth Olmstead, Amy Mitchell, Jesse Holcomb and Nancy Vogt;
Pew Research -- journalism.org -- March 26, 2014
About six in ten U.S. adults (63%) watch online video, and over half of those -- 36% in all -- watch news videos online, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data. [...]
What’s more surprising, perhaps, is the degree to which news is in the mix of what they watch. Fully, 48% of all 18-to-29-year-olds in the U.S. watch news videos online, roughly equal to the 49% of 30-to-49-year-olds who watch news videos online and substantially more than those 50 and older.
[...]
Two other demographics that stand out in online news video consumption more closely mirror broader news habits: education and income.[5] More highly educated Americans are more likely to watch news video. About half of Americans with a college degree or higher watched news video online; this compares with 43% of those who have completed some college and only 22% of those with a high school degree or less.
And you can't motivate an Electorate, if they don't know they're being had.
On-line video has just that potential. To entertain, to educate, to motivate.
Here's the next News Wave ... already in progress.
[...]
Those under 30 also watch a wide range of other kinds of online video. Comedy, music and how-to videos are most popular online, reaching 70% or more of this population each. But, news outpaces sports videos (38%) and politics (32%).
[...]
In 2013, user-generated video played an important role around breaking news and in situations of unrest where access is difficult for professional journalists. [...]
This brave new wave of User-generated news content, will it turn out to be:
-- The pinnacle of the Free Press?
-- Or the nadir of apathetic Amusement?
We are about to find out ...
And if you snooze, you lose the News.
PS. If we wait for the Corporate Media to pickup this "viral" baton -- we will end up being sorely disappointed -- Again. (Unless you like self-interested Ebola Panic-manufacturing stories, that expire faster than the virus itself.)
They gave up on educating and motivating the public, a long time ago. Around about the time they made the News just another "profit center" -- instead of a constitutionally-sanctioned Public Service. Our corporate generators of public sentiment, started to "Lose the News" right then ...
When they started to view us "as Rubes," there purely for their carnival amusement.