News site visits explored
CNET News.com in an article Daily news lost on Facebook generation refers to a study by Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, which reports that the current college generation is losing interest in everyday news:
only a third of teens said they seek out news on the Internet. The other two-thirds of teens said that they read the news when they happen “to come across it.” In other words, if they’re on Facebook and haven’t tailored a real news feed, they’re likely not going to come across it there.
A similar article is in New York Times and The Guardian discussion. Is that so? To find out, I ran a Facebook poll without specific targeting asking the visitors whether they actively visit the news sites out there. As you can see, an exact 33.3% of the 1,000 respondents actually head out to a news site, while 28% are totally indifferent to the online news.
But who’s to blame? Turns out, it’s all women’s fault. 40% of males, but only 26% of females visit the news sites actively. Also, only 24% of males don’t read news at all, while 33% of females responding to the poll admitted no interest.
Not that it’s a bad news, unless you’re in news site business. Spend a few evenings with Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, and you will see how instead of separating the signal from the noise, most of the media out there is in business of just creating more noise, and sensationalizing the non-existing news in case of a slow news day.