Pay for news? More than half of Americans say yes

NEW YORK — A battered news industry can find some flickers of hope in a survey that gauges public willingness to pay for journalism, as long as its leaders plan judiciously.

A little more than half of American adults regularly pay for news, through newspaper and magazine subscriptions, apps on electronic devices or contributions to public media, according to the Media Insight Project, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

It’s not only older people, either. Although they’re less likely than their parents’ generation to subscribe, close to 4 in 10 people younger than 35 also pay. Younger people are also more likely to express a desire to support a news organization’s mission as a reason for subscribing, the project’s study found.

On the other hand, young adults who don’t pay for news are especially likely to say they’re just not very interested in the content that’s for sale.

“We sense a shift,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute. “There’s this perception that people don’t want to pay for news, especially young people, because they can get things from social media. We found that’s not true.”

A quarter of people who confess to regularly tapping a news source for free said they’d be at least moderately likely to pay for the information if they had to pay.

Chicago resident John Ashford subscribes to a handful of news organizations online, partly because of the work’s importance. He said the truth behind a police shooting near where he lived likely would have remained hidden if not for reporters digging in to the story.

“People don’t have the time and the money to investigate what is going on,” he said. “You have to have somebody to do it.”

Nearly one in five Americans donate money to at least one nonprofit media source, the study found.

Three-quarters of newspaper subscribers say they primarily read the product in print, while 21 percent said they see it online, the study found. News executives can’t afford to focus on one type of consumer at the expense of another, Rosenstiel said.

The biggest reason people choose to subscribe is because they believe a news organization excels at covering issues they care about. Executives looking to cut costs need to consider the importance subscribers place in quality, he said.

“Spreading the pain equally so you get a little worse at everything is probably a bad strategy,” he said.