illustration of the number five, representing the five subscription business topics for this column, Five-on-Friday

Five on Friday: Digital News, Internet Trends and Subscription Scams

Featuring Mary Meeker, Hubspot, Disney+ and Reuters Institute

Five on Friday: Digital News

Source: Bigstock Photo

Summer is finally here – and we’re going to celebrate the way we do every Friday – by bringing you subscription features to keep you informed on the latest in the subscription world. In this week’s edition, we share Reuters Institute’s and University of Oxford’s Digital News Report for 2019, Mary Meeker’s top internet trends, customer service tips from Hubspot, all we know about the new Disney+ streaming video subscription service and how an $8.9 million judgment against two dozen companies for subscription scams.

 

 

Reuters Institute’s Annual Digital News Reports Reveals Latest News Consumption Trends

 Internet Trends and Subscription Scams

Source: Reuters Institute

In its eighth annual digital news report, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism reveals the results from global research about how people are consuming news and how they feel about it, including their trust – or distrust – of the media and their willingness to pay for news. The data is based on a survey of more than 75,000 people in 38 markets on 6 continents, including the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia and Latin America, conducted by YouGov in January and February 2019. Here are some of the key findings from that report.

  • There has only been a slight increase in the number of people willing to pay for news online via subscription, membership or donation. In Norway, 34% of readers pay for news and in Sweden, 27% pay. The U.S. remains stable with 16% of news consumers paying for news.
  • In countries where people are paying for news, the vast majority of paying news consumers only pay for one news subscription.
  • Subscription fatigue is partly responsible with respondents acknowledging they’d rather spend subscription dollars on entertainment like Netflix or Spotify than on news.
  • Respondents said if they could only pay for one type of online media subscription for the next year, they would choose online video (37%) and online music (15%) over online news (7%).
  • As distrust for social media increases, in many countries, people are moving away from Facebook to spend more time on WhatsApp and Instagram. (Editor’s note: Facebook owns both WhatsApp and Instagram.)
  • In non-Western countries like Brazil (53%), Malaysia (50%) and South Africa (49%), social communication around news is happening privately in messaging apps.
  • People in many countries have concerns about misinformation and disinformation, including Brazil (85%), U.K. (70%), U.S. (67%), Germany (38%), the Netherlands (31%) and France (24%).
  • In general, the news media is seen at doing a better job at breaking news than they are at explaining it.
  • News avoidance is increasing with 32% of respondents saying they actively avoid the news. This is an overall increase of 6% over the last report.
  • Two-thirds of news consumers user their phones to access news.
  • Most people are still not willing to pay for online news today, and RISJ says that trends show that this is unlikely to change, particularly for news that consumers can currently get for free.
  • In the U.S., people with a college degree are twice as likely to pay for news.
  • During the reporting period, the New York Times had 3.3 million digital-only subscribers, while the Wall Street Journal had 1.5 million and the Washington Post had 1.2 million.

This three-minute video by RISJ provides a great summary of the report’s findings.