Here's another way that the Internet, weblogs in particular, may be replacing reading newspapers: As a way to goof off at work.
Advertising Age magazine (registration or BugMeNot.com required) says, "U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs."
Workers will be blog-involved this year for "the equivalent of 2.3
million jobs," according to the analysis by Bradley Johnson of AdAge.
(I'd check his calculations, but I have blogs to read.)
Publishers of online newspapers can take heart, however, in comments a Nielsen/NetRatings researcher made to Johnson:
"Since for the most part blog
readers tend to be the most engaged readers of online content, they do not appear, at least for now, to be sacrificing time
from their favorite news sites. Instead, it looks like blog usage is in
addition to existing online behavior."
Speaking of newspapers, its thanks to Gloria Pan of the American Press Institute's MediaCenter.org that I saw her colleague Terrance's comparison of the article with his relatively optimistic analysis.
And thanks for Gloria's own comment, which inspired me to post the item you're reading on both my main blog and my AEJMC Newspaper Division blog:
"The ritual of perusing the newspaper used to start many a working day.
I'd like to know how much blog-reading time is replacing that
newspaper-reading time... For example,
are people who used to be pretty good about spending no more than 15
minutes perusing the day's headlines now spending significantly more
time on blogs?"
Sounds like a doctoral dissertation proposal to me! Or at least a
master's thesis. (Not for me, though. Been there; done that.) I'd
advise quick scan of the workplace-sociology research archives for
comparable studies of the at-work, productivity-sapping use of the
telephone, donut, coffee room and water cooler.
9:47:02 AM 
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