The three P's of the news consumer

The three P's: That's how I remember the most significant findings in the latest Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Project for Excellence in Journalism report on Americans' relationship with news in this multi-platform media environment.

According to the report, news is becoming:

• Portable: 33 percent of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized: 28 percent of Internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory: 37 percent of Internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Another interesting finding: Among those who get news online, 75 percent get news forwarded through e-mail or posts on social networking sites and 52 percent share links to news with others via those means.

Are we really going forward with a world without newspapers? It appears so. Where does that leave us? Are we really going to be able to make money in this profession or is journalism becoming an amateur thing that people mostly do in their spare time? I hope someone is working on a new business model pretty quickly.