Retour en 2003 : Web journalism is starting to take off

J'aime bien de temps à autre d'aller fouiller dans les billets que j'avais publié sur le défunt Pssst.qc.ca.
Il est assez rare que les liens publiés il y a plusieurs années soient toujours accessible en ligne, mais celui-ci sur la montée du journalisme en ligne au printemps de 2003 est toujours valide et d'actualité.

Inexorably, all media are losing readers to the 'Net. According to an exhaustive study of US at-work Internet users by the New York-based marketing research firm eMarketer, those who use the web, particularly at work, have cut their television viewing time by 28.8 percent, their magazine reading time by 22.5 percent and of newspapers by 23 percent. These numbers are for the United States, but they are certain to apply to the world at large, and Asia in particular, as time passes....

...Significantly, one survey found that 46 percent of all trade title journalists believe their publication will be available only online within the next 15 years. Some 25 percent of those working for consumer magazines believe the same. Overall, 12 percent of journalists believe their publication will exist solely online within the next five years, while 20 percent expect their publication to go this way in the next 10 years.

Ces dernières projections de 2003 étaient par contre quelque peu pessimistes mais la conclusion finale est assez près de la réalité :

The US Department of Commerce estimates that more than 80 percent of 18-24-year-olds in school or higher institutions in the US have a home computer and 68 percent have home Internet access. Some 86 percent of all college/university students use the Internet, compared with 59 percent of the overall US population.

This is a generation that will probably never read a newspaper. But it is a generation that will use the Internet for just about everything, including reading.