Economics

What’s behind Microsoft’s $26 billion purchase of LinkedIn?

Phillip Nones Business, Economics, Employment, Human Resources, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Marketing Research, Media Consumption, Publishing , , , , , , , , , , ,

LI MCAt first blush, it appears almost ludicrous that Microsoft Corporation is offering an eye-popping $26 billion+ to acquire LinkedIn Corporation.

The dollar figure far eclipses any previous Microsoft acquisition — including the $9 billion+ it paid for Nokia Corporation in 2014, not to mention what the company paid for Yammer and Skype.

What’s also acknowledged is that none of those earlier acquisitions did all that much to further Microsoft’s digital and social credentials — and in the case of Nokia, the financial write-downs Microsoft has recorded have actually exceeded Nokia’s purchase price.

So what’s different about LinkedIn — and why does Microsoft feel that the synergies will work to its advantage better this time?

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, technology journalist Christopher Mims noted that such synergies do exist — and in a much bigger way.

That includes Microsoft Office, the productivity suite that’s now delivered almost exclusively online. And then there’s LinkedIn’s database of over 400 million subscriber professionals.

Put those two elements together with a strong strategic vision, and you have the potential for some pretty amazing synergies.

When you think about it, LinkedIn’s users are essentially Microsoft’s core demographic. And it isn’t something that’s replicated anywhere else in Cyberspace.  Here’s Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella talking:  “It’s really the coming together of the professional cloud and the professional network.”

Acting on its own, LinkedIn hasn’t been all that successful in leveraging what is arguably the most comprehensive and powerful database of business professionals ever compiled in the history of mankind.

While it consists of self-contributed information that hasn’t been “vetted” by outside parties, it’s still the single most comprehensive and valuable repository of information about business professionals — anywhere in the world.

I view the dynamics of LinkedIn as something like the Wikipedia. Wikipedia has become so pervasive, it has driven traditional encyclopedias from the scene.  And while we all know that there can be misstatements of fact — or omissions of facts — from Wikipedia entries, it’s also become the quickest and easiest place to go for information that’s “accurate enough and complete enough” for most any type of informational query.

In similar fashion, LinkedIn is making personnel databases like Dun & Bradstreet that are less robust and accessible only by subscription increasingly obsolete.

And yet … with all of this powerful data at its fingertips, up to now LinkedIn hasn’t been all that effective in leveraging its vast trove of data in way that goes much beyond using it as a personnel recruitment tool.

Try as LinkedIn might to create “stickiness” by offering communities of users based on job function, shared industry involvement and the like, to this day only about one-fourth of LinkedIn’s ~400 million users come to the site on a monthly basis.

The reality is that the vast majority of people continue to access LinkedIn only when they’re in the job market — either as a seeker of talent or seeking a new position for themselves.

In the wake of the pending Microsoft acquisition, those dynamics could change quickly — and in a big way.

One way is in how LinkedIn could begin to provide a big boost to Microsoft’s CRM services. Many companies use such products to identify and track sales leads; in fact, having such a tool is almost a prerequisite for any successful business of any size at all.

As of today, Microsoft languishes behind three other CRM software providers (Salesforce.com, SAP and Oracle). LinkedIn’s own product (LinkedIn Sales Navigator) is essentially an also-ran in the category.

But bringing together LinkedIn’s extensive personnel database with Microsoft’s CRM capabilities looks to deliver data and reach that would be the envy of anyone in the market.

So … it is certainly possible to understand why Microsoft might see LinkedIn as its strategic “ticket to ride” in the coming decades. But two questions remain:

  • Does the acquisition business potential match with the $26 billion+ Microsoft is paying for the buying LinkedIn?
  •  Will Microsoft do a better job of integrating LinkedIn with its other products and services when compared to the disappointing results resulting from its other acquisitions?

We’ll need to check back over the coming months to see how things are come together.

Are France’s New “Right to Disconnect” Regulations Based on a Big “Disconnect” as well?

Phillip Nones Business, Economics, Employment, Government, Human Resources, Social Commentary , , , , ,

mcThe country of France has just enacted labor reform legislation that prohibits the use of work e-mails after-hours.

That is correct: For companies with 50+ employees operating in France, the entities must now define a set of hours when employees are not allowed to send any e-mails.

The legislation, which is part of an omnibus law titled “The Adaptation of Work Rights to the Digital Era,” also stipulates that employees are barred from interacting with work e-mail communications on holidays and on weekends.

To me, this seems like an issue worthy of consideration that’s been taken to an extreme – using a heavy-handed blunt force object when perhaps a scalpel is what’s really required.

Let’s first acknowledge that the French legislation is borne out of real concerns. Few in the business world would argue that the pervasiveness of work-related e-mails has a big downside as it’s crept steadily into every aspect of life.

Stress, fatigue, burnout.  Call it what you will — there’s little doubt that for many people, life in the 24/7 business lane has become distinctly unappealing.

The American Psychological Association cites a litany of problems that go beyond just stress and fatigue, too. It counts high blood pressure, depression, and even elevated cholesterol levels as among the collateral damage of the “always on” business culture.

People’s online behaviors aren’t helping matters, either. Consumer research routinely shows that ~80% of smartphone users check their devices within 15 minutes of waking up.  A similar percentage keep their devices with them at least 22 hours a day or longer.

Clearly, we’re doing it to ourselves as much as any dictates coming from “The Man.”

But like so much else in the realm of social engineering, these new French regulations seem set to result in all sort of unintended consequences.

What about global companies that engage with personnel across a myriad of time zones?  Are those organizations supposed to shut down mission-critical functions when France is “off limits” – jeopardizing the timely transaction of their business activities?

More likely, it will be their French business operations that shut down, rather than the rest of the world sucking it up and catering to the French regulations.

As one MediaPost reader commented after reading about the new law:

“Maybe the Dumbest. Law. Ever. Yet.

If you’re in France working, but your customer is in the U.S., how in the world are you supposed to communicate?  Stay up late and have a phone call with them instead?  Talk about turning people into criminals for no reason.”

Which bring up another point. From Prohibition then to zoning provisions today, “dumb” laws just encourage people to break them.

I can’t see this legislation being a long-term success – but you might disagree. Please share your perspectives with other readers here.

Rising credit card balances: A double-edged sword?

Phillip Nones Banking, Business, Economics, Employment, Marketing, Marketing Communications , , , , , , , ,

Sure, it signifies growing economic strength and confidence … but what about the downside?

WPRAccording to the latest estimates, U.S. credit card balances are expected to hit $1 trillion by the end of 2016.

It’s a milestone of sorts.  After all, the last time Americans’ total credit card balances exceeded $1 trillion was in 2008, just before the onset of the “Great Recession” as the housing/financial crisis intensified.

Does this new peak herald the end of the frugal consumer spending habits which transpired in the wake of the recession?

Perhaps so … but a good deal of the explanation reflects on the financial institutions themselves, who began opening the spigot by relaxing restrictions on signing up subprime consumers.

They’ve also begun raising credit limit amounts.

All this is a change from before, when credit-tightening was the name of the game from 2009 onwards.

Part of what’s driving the new policies is the fact that credit cards represent one of the few bright spots in consumer finance at the moment.

To illustrate the point, large credit-card issuer Capital One reports a year-over-year gain of nearly 15% in the 1st quarter of 2016 compared to a year earlier.  Other major issuers — Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Discover Financial Services among them — also have experienced significant gains.

By contrast, other consumer lending activities are far less lucrative, because low interest rates make margins on traditional lending very low.

I wonder if the rush to ply subprime borrowers with new general-purpose credit cards is a smart long-term proposition, however. Nearly 11 million such cards were issued in 2015.  That’s ~25% higher than in 2014 and the highest number of such cards issued annually since 2007.

Couldn’t the next bout of economic turbulence put us right back into a bevy of defaults as before?  And aren’t we seeing hints of this already?

Here’s a clue:  defaults rates appear to be rising along with the issuing activity — including a steady uptick in each of the first four months of this year.

And let’s not forget automobile loans, either.  They’re up significantly as well — along with delinquency rates.

I think history can help guide us here — and with a lot more caution than was the case back in those halcyon days of 2007.  If there are problems, no one can say that we weren’t forewarned, based on recent history.

What are your thoughts?  Please share them for the benefit of other readers.

State migration trends: A familiar pattern reasserts itself?

Phillip Nones Demographics, Economics, Employment, Social Commentary , , , , , ,

During the “great recession” that began in 2008, the United States saw an interruption in a decades-long pattern of more Americans moving away from states in the Midwest and Northeast than moving in, while more moved to states in the South and West.

The break in this pattern was good news for those who had bemoaned the loss of political clout based on the relative changes in state population.

To wit:  In the four census periods between the 1960s and the 2000s, the 11 Northeast states plus DC saw their Electoral College percentage plummet by 15 percentage points, so that today they represent barely 20% of the electoral votes required to elect the U.S. president, with s similar lack of clout in the House of Representatives.

For the 12 Midwestern states, the trends haven’t been much better.

But for a few years at least, states in the Midwest and Northeast stopped shedding quite so many of their residents to the Southern and Western regions of the country.

The question was, would it last?  Now we know the answer:  Nope.

Instead, new census data is showing a return to familiar patterns.  In the past few years, the states with the largest net in-migration of people are these predictable ones in the Sunbelt region:

  • Florida: +200,000 net new migrants
  • Texas: +170,000
  • Colorado: +54,000
  • Arizona: +48,000
  • South Carolina: +46,000

By comparison, woebegone Illinois, beset by state fiscal crises, a mountain of over-bloated state pension obligations and a crumbling infrastructure that causes some people major-league heartburn on a daily basis, experienced a net loss of more than 100,000 people.

New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey and other “rust belt” states aren’t far behind.

This map, courtesy of The Washington Post, pretty much says it all:

 

untitled

 

There is one glaring difference today compared to previous decades. Back then, California was always at or near the top in terms of positive net in-migration from other states.  That’s all different now – as California is a state with one of the largest net losses.

What’s particularly telling is that California, which used to share many of the characteristics of other Sunbelt and Western states, now seems much more in line with the Northeast and Industrial Midwest when it comes to fundamental factors like state personal and corporate tax rates, real estate prices, environmental regulations, employment dynamics, unionization rates, and the size of public payrolls as a share of the total labor force.

Based on the entrenched and intractable socio-political dynamics at work, don’t look for the migration patterns to change anytime soon.

What are your own personal perspectives, based on where you live?

Tax filing: Is there a better way to do it here in the United States?

Phillip Nones Banking, Economics, Employment, Government , , , , , , ,

untitledTax filing day has come and gone, and for millions of Americans, it’s another reminder of how complicated and convoluted our current tax collection system is.

For some of us, it means setting aside a couple evenings or an entire weekend to collect receipts and other relevant documentation, work through the filing documents and prepare tax information — most of which the federal government already possesses.

For many others, trepidation — or just the sheer irritation of preparing their tax returns — means paying another person or a tax preparation service to do it for them.

The amount of hours and dollars spent on tax preparation is rather astounding; according to a White House estimate published as far back as 2010, collectively it amounts to over 7.5 billion hours and ~$140 billion each year.

Thus, the current lay of the land should make considering new alternatives just the thing to do.

Along those lines, in a recent article in The Atlantic, senior economics editor Derek Thompson posited a “third way”:  Why not receive a document from the government with the relevant information already filled in, and all the taxpayer needs to do is confirm the documentation?

It seems like a cross between Pollyanna and a pipe dream … until one begins to realize how neatly this approach aligns with the financial lives many people lead.

According to the Atlantic article, about half of American taxpayers earn all of their earned income from a single employer’s wages along with interest income from just one financial institution.  This is information the government already collects, which would make it possible for the IRS to send nearly completed tax forms to these individuals.

Some Scandinavian and Baltic countries have been doing this for years.

In fact, a full decade ago economist Austan Goolsbee proposed this very thing for the USA.  In a paper published by the Brookings Institution, Goolsbee advocated adoption of a “simple return” that would involve sending out pre-filled documents to those taxpayers who have the most straightforward taxes.

Those who qualify would include approximately 9 million single, lower income taxpayers who work for a living and don’t itemize their deductions.

An additional 17 million taxpayers have returns that are nearly as simple — including married couples who don’t itemize deductions.

Alas, as with any problem, there is a solution that’s “simple, elegant … and wrong.” Barriers preventing the adoption of a new, streamlined tax filing process include three big ones:

  • The current federal income tax system is not just complex, but also riddled with special interest protections. While in theory, a powerful argument for simplification falls on receptive ears, ultimately it fails when people begin to realize how the reform will reduce their own personal tax benefits. Too often, it’s “Tax simplification for three but not for me.”

 

  • The cost to overhaul the tax collection system isn’t chicken feed — and as we all know the IRS isn’t exactly swimming in excess funds after having raised the ire of Congress through its targeting of not-for-profit entities (not to mention the not-so-trivial cost of implementing Obamacare compliance enforcement).

 

  • Resistance is also coming from two other quarters. Tax preparation services are fundamentally opposed to simplification of the process because their very raison d’être depends on the continuation of a complex system that most people cannot or will not deal with on their own.

[On this last point, unlikely allies of the tax preparation services are political conservatives who may hate the current tax code, but who are suspicious of any remedies that might make tax collection become any “easier” for the government.]

Still … it would seem that any serious effort at rethinking the current tax filing system should be given all due consideration, as I have yet to meet anyone who is satisfied with the way things are today.

Where do you come down on the issue? Please share your observations with other readers here.

The States Where Your Dollar Goes a Good Deal Further

Phillip Nones Demographics, Economics, Employment, Government, Social Commentary , , , ,

billsPeople have long suspected that many of America’s “richest” areas, based on salaries and other income, also happen to be where the cost of living is significantly higher.

Silicon Valley plus the New York City, Boston and the DC metro areas are some of the obvious regions, notorious for their out-of-sight housing and real estate prices.

But there are other factors at work as well in these high-cost areas, such as the cost of delivering goods to certain areas well-removed from the nation’s major trunk transportation arteries (think Alaska, Hawaii, Washington State and Minnesota).

And then there are state and local taxes. There appears to be a direct relationship between higher costs of living and higher taxation, too.

It’s one thing to go on hunches. But helpfully, all of these perceptions have been confirmed by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, using Personal Consumption Expenditure and American Community Survey data to do so.  Rolling the data up, the BEA has published comparative figures for all 50 states plus DC pertaining to the relative cost of living.

The approach was simple: consolidate the data to come up with a dollar figure in each state that represents how much $100 can purchase locally compared to the national average.  To get there, average price levels in each state have been calculated for household consumption, including rental housing costs.

Based on 2014 data, the figures have been mapped and are shown below:

100

So, just how far does $100 go?

The answer to that question is this: quite a bit further if you live in the mid-Continent region of the country compared to the Pacific Coast or the Northeast U.S.

In fact, $100 will get you upwards of 15% more goods and services in quite a few states. Here are the Top 10 states how much $100 will actually buy there:

  • Mississippi: $115.74 worth of goods and services
  • Arkansas: $114.16
  • Alabama: $113.51
  • Missouri: $113.51
  • South Dakota: $113.38
  • West Virginia: $112.87
  • Ohio: $112.11
  • Iowa: $111.73
  • Kansas: $111.23
  • Oklahoma: $111.23

At the other end of the scale, $100 is only going to buy about 20% to 30% fewer goods and services in the “Bottom 10” states compared to the “Top 10.” Here’s how it looks state-by-state:

  • DC: $84.60
  • Hawaii: $85.32
  • New York: $86.66
  • New Jersey: $87.64
  • California: $88.57
  • Maryland: $89.85
  • Connecticut: $91.41
  • Massachusetts: $93.28
  • Alaska: $93.37
  • New Hampshire: $94.16

Which states are closest to the $100 reference figure? Those would be Illinois at $99.40, and Oregon at $101.21.

I must say that those last two figures surprised me a bit … as I would have expected $100 to go less far in Illinois and Oregon.

Which of the state results surprise you? If any of them do, please share your observations with other readers.

Momentous milestone? U.S. advertising dips below 1% of GDP for the first time in living memory.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Economics, Media, Media Consumption, Sales , , , , , , , ,

sdThe advertising industry has often been characterized as “boring.”  This 2014 analytical article from Bloomberg encapsulates the argument pretty succinctly.

Still, the “lay of the land” in the late 2000s and early 2010s represents a bit of a changeup from the previous decades of predictability.

During the period beginning the late 2000s when the “advertising recession” hit in an even bigger way than the overall U.S. economic recession, I’ve heard various industry insiders posit that there was more than merely a retrenchment happening due to overall economic conditions.

Beyond that, it was suggested that a migration was happening away from traditional advertising methods to more measurable ones.

Now we have more than just hunches to go on — and the results appear to be aligning with those suspicions.

The new evidence comes in the form of statistics released this week and reported on by MediaPost.

According to an analysis of ad spending trends published by Sanford Bernstein Research and Magna Global, for the first time in modern history U.S. advertising industry revenues have dropped below 1% of total U.S. Gross Domestic Product.

During the period 1999 to 2010, total advertising averaged 1.25% of GDP, but since then the percentage has stagnated or fallen. The 2014 total advertising estimate of $165 billion is 0.95% of GDP.  (The Bernstein/Magna research covers U.S. advertising revenues up through the year 2014.)

tbThe decline in advertising’s share of GDP is primarily due to the diminishing importance of two key traditional media categories: broadcast TV and cable TV.

Broadcast TV advertising’s annual revenue growth averaged around 3% per year between 1990 and 2010.  Since 2011, it’s been flat.

Cable TV has done somewhat better – but even there what had been around 12% growth per year has slowed to just a ~3% annual increase.

With such big baseline numbers for broadcast and cable TV, the behavior of these two broadcast categories have been key drivers of the advertising sector’s overall performance.

But we mustn’t forget another category that’s been performing pretty miserably of late: newspaper advertising.  It’s experienced a ~10% decline on a compound annual basis from 2010 to 2014.

That decline is even steeper than earlier projections had suggested.

Todd Juenger, a vice president and senior analyst at Sanford Bernstein, made a key takeaway observation about the newly published figures, noting:

“Our original piece theorized [that] advertising would recover to prior levels. Instead, it has remained deflated, suggesting the perhaps the Internet really has enabled marketers to eliminate waste.”

He’s right, of course.

Magazine Profitability Strategies: Prevention Magazine Goes for a Radical Solution

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Economics, Manufacturing, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing , , , , , ,

pmWhen a business model becomes problematic, sometimes the only solution is to step outside the circle with some seriously radical thinking.

That seems to be what magazine publisher Rodale has done with its flagship media property, Prevention magazine.

As reported by Jeffrey Trachtenberg this past week in The Wall Street Journal, beginning with the July issue, Prevention will no longer accept print advertising.

It’s a major step for a publication as venerable as Prevention, in print since 1950 and an important player in the magazine segment focusing on nutrition, fitness and weight loss.

According to the Trachtenberg piece, Prevention magazine has actually seen an increase in ad pages – up over 8% to 700+ ad pages in 2015 over the year before.  But here’s the rub:  ad revenues were actually down because of circulation losses.

The magazine hasn’t turned a profit in a number of years, either, although other related Rodale titles have (Runner’s World and Men’s Health).

The radical surgery planned for the publication means that the number of pages of a typical magazine issue will decline dramatically. So the cost of printing and shipping will go down.  In order to make up for the loss in ad revenue, the magazine’s subscription price is set to more than double to nearly $50 per year.

Price-conscious as consumers are, that action is expected to drive circulation figures down even further – from around 1.5 million to roughly 500,000 if the company’s projections are correct.

Is this an ingenious idea that will preserve and strengthen a highly regarded publication? Or a desperate action that will end up simply driving this magazine into oblivion in a novel way?

Maria Rodale

Maria Rodale, CEO of the family-owned publication company, thinks the former. As she stated to reporter Trachtenberg:

“We’re walking away from revenue but we’re also walking away from a lot of expense. Let’s serve our readers and charge them for it.”

Rodale anticipates that Prevention magazine’s operating expenses will be reduced by more than 50%.

What are the implications of that?  Maria Rodale again:

“If you have to run the numbers out with an advertising model, it’s hard to see it ever getting to profitability. With a non-advertising model, it quickly becomes profitable.”

… But I’m not so sure. This radical departure from the traditional ad-supported publication model may pay short-term dividends.  But will it turn out to be merely a momentary respite before the next downward slide – this time into irrelevance?

With so much information being so easily accessible online (and free of charge) – particularly in the areas of preventive health – I can easily envision fewer and fewer people wishing to shell out $50+ per year for the benefit of receiving a monthly publication that may or not contain highly relevant and valuable information each and every issue.

What do you think? Is this a silver-bullet solution?  Or a zinc zeppelin?

For many people, what’s “breaking news” isn’t breaking on traditional news media outlets.

Phillip Nones Content Creation and Content Management, Demographics, Economics, Media, Media Consumption, Publishing , , , , , , , , , , , ,

First it was Jon Stewart. Now it’s social media. 

(AP)
(AP)

If you suspect that Americans are increasingly getting their news from someplace other than the standard TV/cable, print and online news outlets, you’re right on the money.

In fact, research conducted by the Pew Center in association with the Knight Foundation during 2015 reveals that the share of people for whom Facebook and Twitter serve as a source of news is continuing to rise.

More specifically, nearly two thirds of the 2,000+ Americans age 18 and older surveyed by Pew (~63%) reported that they’re getting news reporting from Facebook.

A similar percentage reported receiving news from Twitter as well.

That compares with ~52% reporting that they received news from Twitter back in 2013 … and ~47% from Facebook.

Although both of these social networks now have the same portion of people getting news from these two sources, the Pew research discovered some nuanced differences as to their strengths.

smnA far bigger portion of people follow “breaking news” on Twitter compared to Facebook (~59% versus ~31%), which underscores Twitter’s strength in providing immediate “as-it-happens” coverage and commentary on live events.

Seeing such behaviors, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that both social networks have been implementing more initiatives that strengthen their positions as news sources even more:

  • Facebook has launched Instant Articles, a functionality that allows media companies to publish stories directly to the Facebook platform instead of linking to outside websites.
  • Facebook has also introduced a new Trending sidebar that allows users to filter news by major topic categories such as sports, entertainment, politics, technology and science.
  • Twitter has introduced live events to its roster, thanks to its purchase of the live video-streaming app Periscope.
  • A related Twitter initiative, dubbed Moments (aka: Project Lightning), allows anyone – even a person without a Twitter account – to view ongoing feeds of tweets, images and videos pertaining to live events.

According to Pew, news exposure is on social media roughly equal among all demographic factors including gender, ethnicity and income. The one exception, of course, is age.

All of these developments underscore the fact that the “traditional” TV, print and online outlets are no longer dominant when it comes to news consumption. And it’s highly unlikely that the trend will ever be reversed, either.

Sea change: Today, Americans are receiving their political news in vastly different ways.

Phillip Nones Demographics, Economics, Government, Marketing Research, Social Commentary, Social Media , , , ,

pnWhere are Americans getting their political news in this very intensive Presidential election year?

There’s no question that the season is turning out to be a news bonanza, beginning with the string of debates featuring interesting and entertaining candidates and continuing on with near-nonstop political coverage on the cable networks.

And then there’s the endless chatter over on talk radio …

Recently, the Pew Research Center asked Americans where they’re receiving their political news. According to its just-issued report, Pew found that nine in ten American adults age 18+ typically consume some sort of news about the presidential election in any given week’s time.

When asked to cite which sources of information of political news are “most helpful,” here’s how the respondents answered:

  • Cable TV news: ~24% cited as the “most helpful” source of information
  • Local TV news: ~14%
  • Social media: ~14%
  • Website or apps: ~13%
  • Radio: ~11%
  • Network nightly news broadcasts: ~10%
  • Late-night comedy TV: ~3%
  • Local newspapers: ~3%
  • National newspapers: ~2%

Looking at this pecking order, several things stand out:

  • Even a few years ago, I doubt social media would have outstripped network TV or radio as a more helpful source of political news.
  • And look at where cable TV news is positioned — not only at the top of the list, but substantially above any other source of political information.
  • As for newspapers … even accounting for the fact that some websites or apps cited as helpful political news sources may actually be digital outlets for newspapers, newspapers’ position at the bottom of the list underscores their rapid loss of importance (and influence) in the political sphere. Aside from inflating a candidate’s own ego, who really cares about newspaper endorsements anymore?

Not surprisingly, the Pew research finds noticeable differences in the preference of political news sources depending on the age of the respondents. For instance, among respondents age 65+, here are the top four “most helpful” sources:

  • Cable TV news: ~43%
  • Network nightly news broadcasts: ~17%
  • Local TV news: ~10%
  • Local newspapers: ~6%

Contrast this with the very youngest respondents (age 18 to 29), where the two most helpful sources of information are social media (~35%) and websites or apps (~18%).

I’m sure readers have their own personal views as to which of the sources of political news are preferable in terms of their veracity. For some, social media and late-night TV comedy programs illustrate a general decline in the “quality” of the news, whereas others might look at radio programs or cable TV news in precisely the same negative terms.

More details on the Pew Research study can be found here.