Rise in Sea Level

Increasing sea levels may be one outgrowth of climate change.

40 Percent of Older Folks get News on Smart Phones

It’s no surprise that a majority of smartphone owners use their phone to follow breaking news, but it is more surprising that a Pew Research Center's study found that 40 percent of smartphone users over 65 also do so, at least occasionally.

 The percentage is much higher for young people: 72 percent of people 18-29 use smart phones to get the news.

Rebecca Beitsch, a 20-something reporter at Stateline, a news service, is a bit of an aberration for her age group.

Rebecca mentioned getting news from Facebook. Some 90 percent of adults in Rebecca's age group are on Facebook, according to Pew, while 46 percent of adults over 65 are Facebook users. Increasingly, Facebook and other social media are the way people get their news on mobile devices.

Mobile, Social Media Are Portals to News: Pew (2)

Pure journalists, especially editors, have very little control over how their content is read, understood, or distributed. That's a main takeaway after reading the Pew Research Center’s “State of the News Media.”

The Pew report noted that most people who read news content electronically, especially on mobile devices, come to that content through third-party sources like social media.

University of Maryland faculty member Chris Harvey finds some depressing news in the report for traditional news people. 

The challenge for news professionals is to display their content on a mobile-friendly device while at the same time providing the widest variety of news choices. And it would be nice to get the kind of ad revenue that Facebook racks up daily too.