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A new report from polling firm Zogby International has troubling signals for conventional media of all types:

70% of Americans think journalism is important to the quality of life in their communities.
67% think traditional journalism is out of touch with what Americans want from their news.
32% said Internet sites are their most trusted source for news and information.
22% said newspapers are the most trusted.
21% said television is the most trusted.
15% said radio is the most trusted.

But I'm not seeing any discussion of the survey methodology, which is troubling: "A sampling of Zogby International's online panel, which is representative of the adult population of the US, was invited to participate." This is not a conventional survey of the general population, but rather an online poll that's been weighted to adjust for the respondents' "region, party, age, race, religion, gender." I would not be taking this one to the bank on the issue of media preference.

The other day, when commenting on the MinnPost.com announcement, I said "we may be heading for a world in which nothing is dominant."

Now comes a bit of research from the management-consulting firm McKinsey & Company that demonstrates what I meant. The charts are hard to read, but here's the nut graf: "The research — an online survey of 2,100 consumers in the United States — found that the respondents divide their time among as many as 16 news brands a week. 'Brand promiscuity,' it appears, is the norm. Such findings have implications for media companies as they refine their products and strategies."

Editors Weblog cites a study from the Newspaper Audience Databank that shows baby boomers in Canada still consume print (56% weekdays, 78% weekly cume): "Their readership habits have changed little over the past 20 years."

That should not be surprising. If you analyze the (publicly available) GSS data on U.S. readership and track birth year cohorts across time, you'll discover that statement to be generally true of ALL age cohorts. For any cohort, there is only a very slight downward trend over time.

The point is that media consumption patterns are set early in life, and tend to persist. The change that endangers the newspaper business model is not one that involves readers losing the habit. It is, instead, a generational change that involves losing the actual readers from the population pool. They are being replaced by people who grew up with iPods and instant messaging and SMS and the Web. And the new generation moving into place will grow up with on-demand video, primarily through the Web.

This change is slow enough that newspaper managers can miss it, mistaking temporary fluctuations for trends. One publisher recently crowed that his circulation was up 1.24% daily while most others were down, and concluded that he's strategically right and everybody else is wrong. Don't mistake the weather for climate.

Pew's report "Bloggers: A portrait of the Internet's new storytellers" has already been thoroughly discussed by the usual suspects, but I can't resist observing that the Hindu fable of the blind men and the elephant is once again in play. Much nonsense about the blogosphere has been written by people who apparently have encountered only the tusk or the trunk. The Pew report paints a more complete picture.

It's important to keep in mind that statistics are just statistics. While the Pew survey shows bloggers tend to be younger than the general Internet population, it would be a mistake to jump to the conclusion that older people can't or won't blog.

When we offered free blogspace to everyone in Bluffton, SC, last year, we wondered about that. Bluffton skews older than many markets and is a popular retirement and semiretirement destination with its many golf courses. We discovered that the offer was eagerly accepted by people no longer twentysomething. The typical blogger at BlufftonToday.com is a woman in her late 30s, but some of the site's best users are in their 60s. We're seeing the same pattern emerge at SavannahNow, which jumped into the deep end of the pool last month.

Newspapers that look at the blogging phenomenon as a political fad involving young wannabee journalists flinging agitprop are making a very big mistake.

Pew has some interesting data on Internet penetration and usage around the world, and it appears that there's a big uptick in the numbers of middle-age Web users.

Yet the myth persists of a medium dominated by young users. The young, I think, are living in mobile text messaging and -- when at home -- AIM. To connect with younger people, do we need to be more "snacky?"

I'm still catching up on good items that were posted while I was traveling. Vin Crosbie has a detailed look at who's using newspaper websites, based on data from Greg Harmon at Belden Research.

Among the key findings is that newspaper website users are growing older. We all are, of course, but this is collective data. It's not surprising; Web activity by people aged 40 to 65 has noticably surged in the last couple of years.

Another tidbit is this (emphasis is mine): "Nearly three-quarters of users also read the newspaper's printed edition. Twenty eight percent don't, and almost all (25 percent of all users) of the ones who don't those have never subscribed to the printed edition."

Well worth reading.

Most newspaper websites have been riding a powerful growth curve for years ... one that is beginning to flatten. We're reaching the limits of the audience that has a high interest in the current news product. In order to continue growth, we have to look not just at the audience but at the non-audience. And we need to figure out how we can be of interest, and of service, to that current non-audience. That's easier said than done.