For the first time, the Norwegian survey that monitors news consumption shows that the online editions of local media companies are now more popular than their printed newspapers.
The so-called Norsk mediabarometer showed that 49 percent of those questioned read a newspaper on an average day in 2014, compared to 51 percent the year before.
By contrast, 88 percent read news on the Internet, 74 percent watched a television news program and 64 percent listened to the radio.
Media commentator Torstein Hvattum of Aftenposten, which now ranks as Norway’s largest newspaper but also has seen its circulation shrink considerably in recent years, wrote that the numbers don’t mean the newspapers will disappear entirely. “One possibility is to make the newspapers an arena for analysis, commentary and background articles,” he wrote. “If the media companies succeed with their multimedia strategies, print and online media can live in harmony for the foreseeable future.”
newsinenglish.no staff
