Consumers of news are more aggressive than ever before

I read the news today, Oh Boy! People aren't reading newspapers as much as they used to. At the Washington Post, circulation is down almost 3 percent in just one year; the Los Angeles Times is down over 6 percent. Even The Wall Street Journal is down almost 1 percent. The New York Times has bragging rights simply by remaining flat. And, the situation may be even worse for smaller newspapers in some markets.

Newspapers certainly aren't alone in the reports of decline. Until now, the headlines have screamed at us about declines in network news. It's said that misery loves company, but I'm not really looking for company because I don't find the situation nearly as bleak as some of the reporting makes it out to be.

Why is it that fewer people are getting their news from our major newspapers or from the broadcast evening news? It's certainly not because they've lost their value. Even with the declines we're seeing, both newspapers and evening newscasts still remain dominant news providers for many millions of Americans. Eight out of 10 Americans read at least one newspaper over the course of a week; more than half of all adults read a newspaper every day of the week. Nearly 100 million Americans watch at least one broadcast evening news program every week, and about 25 million watch every night.

And I don't think anyone can claim that the drop-off in newspaper circulation or evening news viewership is because of some decline in overall interest in the news. The fact that there are fewer Americans reading the Washington Post or watching World News Tonight with Peter Jennings doesn't tell us anything about the overall appetite of our audiences for news and information. To the contrary, over the past decade we've seen an explosion in the number of news outlets in this country -- from cable news channels to the Internet to more local television covering the news. We wouldn't have had this explosion unless there was an appetite out there for the news and information being provided.

No, the issue isn't that the size of the news pie is shrinking. If anything, it's growing. But it is being sliced into smaller and smaller pieces. And the primary reason is simple: convenience. People don't want to wait for their news, and they certainly don't want it to be out of date. They never have. A generation ago, we saw the virtual death of the evening newspaper in large part because people could get their news in the evening from television, which was putting the news report to bed minutes before broadcast, rather than several hours earlier.

Now, we're seeing a much more aggressive form of the same consumer demand for news. Our audiences increasingly want the ability to be updated instantaneously, 24 hours a day, anywhere they are and on whatever device they may have at their disposal. If we want to continue to reach all the people we've reached in the past, we have to find ways to come to them at all times of day and night, rather than trying to make them come to us at times of our choosing.

Established news organizations are finding some early success in the new world of news ubiquity. The New York Times has more online readers than paid subscribers to its newspaper. The Wall Street Journal Online has more than 700,000 subscribers, most of whom are not print subscribers and are thus new to the Journal. At ABC News, our broadband services reach millions of people with "video on demand" news reports and hundreds of thousands of people simultaneously during breaking news events.

The good news, then, is that those of us in more traditional news organizations can make the new technology work to our advantage. More people may be using more alternatives all the time, but those alternatives also give us more ways to reach our audiences.

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The bigger question is where people will turn for their news in a new world where everything is available all the time. Why should someone turn to ABC News or The Wall Street Journal rather than to the news blogger that pops up on our computer? And this is where we may be falling short. We like to think that we're different and better than some of the less tried-and-true providers of news and information. We have traditions of journalistic excellence. We check things out. We have editors and processes to vet what we have to report before we report it. We dedicate many people and large amounts of money to going out and finding the stories.

But recently we've seen not only a dramatic increase in the ways that people can get their news, but also dramatic examples of some of our best and most respected news organizations falling short. And, ironically, the very same outlets for news and opinion and gossip that are competing for our readers and our viewers are also leading the charge to showcase our shortcomings, instantly and with gusto.

People tend to focus on notorious examples at the New York Times, USA Today, and CBS News. But the issue goes well beyond a few isolated, rogue reporters and producers. I lead one of the five major broadcast and cable news organizations that called the presidential election wrong in 2000 not once but twice. And, in retrospect, none of us did our duty to the American people when we failed to press questions about weapons of mass destruction in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraq war.

There are an awful lot of dedicated journalists out there doing first-rate work every day of the year, often at great personal risk. We have a lot to be proud of. But, in the end, the strength of our work lies entirely in the eye of the beholder, our readers and viewers. If we want to serve as the news outlets for the millions of people who historically have turned to us each day, then we will need to go beyond mastering the new ways of reaching our audiences. We need to demonstrate to the American people, relentlessly, a quality of journalism so great that everyone recognizes it and no one can deny it. That way, when people look at all the myriad alternatives for their news, they will choose us -- no longer because they lack any viable alternative but increasingly because, despite the alternatives, they value what we have to report.

David L. Westin, president of ABC News, wrote this column for The Wall Street Journal.