OK. So I’m trying a new experiment that goes against my nature.

I’m going to try to write shorter posts.

Carlos and Albert have told me that my posts are a bit long, particularly for non-native English speakers. I like to think of my posts as stream-of-consciousness mini-essays, but it seems that in this Twitter-generation, I might be a bit antiquated, lost in my fond memories of being an eager college student at Yale.

So for today, I’ll try the short post thing, which suits me just fine, because today is Monday and Monday is the toughest day of the week, particularly in August when everyone one else is at the beach and you’re in the office working.

So getting to the point: MarketingDirecto.com has a good summary of a study published by Edison Media Research discussing the changing perceptions about the importance of newspapers versus the Internet in the United States:

• 1/3 Americans (referring to people from the US) think that newspapers are the least important media format (relative to TV, Internet and radio).
• Only 10% of Americans think that newspapers are important.
• 33% of Americans think that the Internet is important vs. 36% that think that television is important.

In short, Internet is catching up to TV (traditionally, the most important medium), and newspapers are in danger of becoming irrelevant.

It’ll be interesting to see how the newspapers respond to this threat. In the late 1990s, it seemed that they mostly ignored it, fueling the rise of companies like Rightmove, Idealista and Seloger. This time around, I don’t think that they have that luxury, at least based on their annual reports and other corporate documents that show negative growth numbers without any optimistic future outlook.

It’ll also be interesting to see how television companies will respond. The BBC has demonstrated one approach with its iPlayer. But I’m sure this is just the tip of the iceberg.