As traditional news outlets like newspapers magazines and TV stations grapple with moving online, they must cultivate key audiences including 35- to 44-year-olds, who are the biggest consumers of online sources a study shows. Some 24 percent of this demographic, which includes members of Generation X and Baby Boomers, get their news online.

Meanwhile, only 19 percent of these same consumers read newspapers, according to a report from JupiterResearch. Contrast that with people over 55. Some 41 percent of them read newspapers intensively. The audience for online news is often separate and distinct from the audience that consumes news in print or on television, and the web audience isn’t satisfied with news that’s merely recycled from a paper or a broadcast.

This explains in part why many major newspapers and magazines aren’t boosting traffic to their web sites to offset losses in circulation as much as they would like, the report said. They are increasingly competing with blogs, portals, and news aggregators that distribute information in a more informal, conversational, and engaging way, the report said.

“The issue that hangs like a cloud for everybody in this area is ‘How can I do this without harming my traditional media property?’” said Barry Parr, Jupiter media analyst and author of the report. “That’s a hard question.” The Internet has created new habits and consumption patterns as audiences migrate to the web.

However, print still has its share of loyal fans, primarily the older and more affluent cross-sections of society. People read newspapers out of habit and because its form currently makes it more practical to read on a plane, say, than it would be to surf the Net. But that may change as technologies change.

And younger people don’t have the same habits as older people. Some 13 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds get their information from online sources. Of the same group, only 2 percent are serious newspaper readers, the report said. Meanwhile, 8 percent of them are keen magazine readers. In the 25-to-34 age bracket, 22 percent look for news online while only 10 percent read the newspaper extensively.

The Internet has clearly created new habits and consumption patterns. And if print media companies want to do more than just survive on the web, they need to figure out how to expand their audience, the report said. Between 1970 and 1990, daily newspaper circulation was flat, according to trade journal Editor & Publisher. Since 1990, it has been declining, despite increases in population.

The majority of the public, about 40 percent, still gets news from local television. That fact has likely helped the web sites of cable television outfits. In the online world, cable TV has emerged as the leader, with 30 percent of consumers getting their news from new cable TV news sites, such as CNN.com and MSNBC.com.

The second-most visited sites for news are the portals like Yahoo, who control 17 percent of the audience. Lower on the list are newspapers and magazines as they struggle to figure out the right strategy to grow both the web property and the traditional component.

News sites that are successful offer customization and interactive features. In other words, are they addressing online readers who are not reading print media. What is required is that sites need to be more interactive and more open.

Online news readership is growing. The audience for web news grew 7 percent this year through November over last year, surpassing the growth in Internet users. They grew only 6 percent, according to data from comScore Media Metrix.

The top sites for news are MSNBC.com and Yahoo with more than 26 million users, according to the report. Meanwhile, the fastest growing aggregating news site is Google News, run by the search giant Google. It boasts annual growth in unique visitors nearly 50 percent. Even the fastest-growing newspaper sites such as USA Today have growth of only about half that rate.

Indeed, traditional media has a lot of work to do on the web, the report says. Most local print media and TV news stations are reaching only one-quarter to one-third of their potential audience, Jupiter said. And it’ll stay that way unless traditional media companies begin to exploit the web’s interactivity and other possibilities.

Among the changes news outlets must make include allowing more linking from the outside, being responsive to blogs, and opening up their archives. What’s more, old-line media outfits will have to make their information available in formats beyond the Internet browser. To do this, they’ll have to understand how to make their news available via assorted protocols and standards on a wide variety of devices.

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