McKinsey Quarterly is carrying a fascinating article titled “What consumers want from online news”. Click here to read the full article (free, but needs registration).

They carried out a survey in the US to cover news habits across five media platforms (radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and the Internet).

Summary of Findings:

- Media tries to ‘own’ customers, but customers thwart these efforts.
- ‘Brand promiscuity’ is the norm.
- Customers rely on 12-16 brands a week across all five platforms in order to ‘get more’ or ‘get all sides’ or ‘form their own opinion’.
- TV and internet were the most common sources because of convenience, comprehensiveness or timeliness rather than quality. Access wins over quality.
- Regarding motivations for consuming news - they identified three segments ‘citizen readers’, ‘news lovers’ and ‘digital cynics’ representing 18, 15, and 18 percent of respondents. Together they make up 75% of the audience for online services.

Our findings have significant implications for media companies. A multisource aggregator, for example, could step in to meet the consumers’ desire for volume and variety in online news. A national news organization could present its version of major events but also select and provide links to related stories, blogs, and videos produced by others. Web sites featuring national news could partner with the sites of local newspapers or TV stations to serve up local content beyond the real-estate ads and weather-related search functions typically available. The outlines of such an approach are evident in recent deals between Yahoo! and local newspaper groups and between CNN and Internet Broadcasting Systems. Still, much closer cooperation among media companies will likely be needed.

Furthermore, media companies have a significant opportunity to develop niche news products for underserved consumer segments, particularly the digital cynics. Citizen readers, the target of most traditional print publications, express high satisfaction with existing news products. But digital cynics, who spend 30 to 40 percent less time each day on news than citizen readers and news lovers do, feel dissatisfied with most offline products. Winning the trust of this group will be challenging, as it requires a fundamentally different editorial sensibility. Given the size of the segment—24 million adults—and the number of advertisers coveting it, the prize could be substantial for those that succeed.

This brings up a number of interesting questions. Some of these are: Instead of ‘owning’, shouldn’t media be looking at (a). grabbing the attention in the first place and, (b) providing ‘just enough’ to keep them coming back? How would aggregators like Google News and Digg address these digital cynics? If traditional newspapers like New York Times and Washington Post keep only the citizen readers happy and thus face overall, decreasing subscribership, then how should they revamp? If ‘easy access’ is the driving force, then the mobile platform plays a vital role and therefore, ways to tap into the constant connectivity become prime focus. On a deeper level, where then is journalism, reporting and editorial-content headed? How does media-ownership affect these equations?