Are you missing something?

Having been around media monitoring and analysis for quite a few years I sometimes wonder if a tipping point has been reached and you can achieve a picture of coverage by considering just the online sources.

However, is there a possibility you are missing something by taking the web exposure as a proxy of all exposure?

For the last couple of months I have been comparing the online and printed output for a couple of trade publications to establish how much is original to each medium. Although this is a limited sample the results seem quite startling.

In essence, if you only consider the online coverage you are missing almost half of the picture. Please note this is quite unscientific and I would hasten to add much dependant on the titles. With some, their online coverage almost mirrors the printed coverage, while others are apparently quite different. If I were to offer a broad observation on which types fit into these, the more frequently published titles (daily & weeklies) will often more closely resemble the online offering, while the less frequent (ie. monthly magazines) tend towards greater unique online and printed content.

That said, I am sure many of us have found it difficult to find a printed article in the online version of a daily press title.

Obviously press is in decline and online is the future, but we would appear to not quite be there yet. I would be very interested in if this matches with your experiences?