Newsroom barometer

In case you missed it (I did while I was out last week in New Orleans), the World Association of Newspapers has issued its first Newsroom Barometer based on a Zogby poll.

Generally upbeat, its value is that it takes a world view of the industry, not just a North American or Eurocentric one. That leavens things just a bit. This is reflected in the unsurprising results that a plurality of editors (40 percent) think online will be the main medium for their newsrooms 10 years from now, while 35 percent think it will be print. One in 10 say mobile and 7 percent say e-paper. As noted, this reflects differences in technology adoption and availability around the world, something we sometimes forget.

WAN is using the blog posts to flog sales of its broader Trends in Newsrooms report. For only 169 Euros ($227) you can have your own PDF version. (It's $187 if you can prove you are a journalism school.)

Another interesting conclusion:

Instead of fearing the competition of citizen journalism, the vast majority of editors welcome it (79%, see question 2). Perhaps more significantly, only 5% of respondents view new media journalism as a threat. More editors than not now consider free papers as ‘real’ newspapers, as part of the transition towards the audience’s changing habits.