Early in 1994, I saw a manager, an IT consultant, arrive at a meeting. I noticed this because he was late. I remember it because he came into the meeting with a bunch of European newspapers. At the time, I saw this as an encouraging sign for European integration and European journalism, an alternative to the corraling of news behind paywalls erected by Lexis/Nexis, West, Bloomberg, and other services.

I thought back to this anecdote while reading a thoughtful and data-rich report from the Pew Research Center on how people (American people, in this case) get news. Most Americans say they follow the news most or all of the time, generally with several news sources: television, online, radio, newspaper.

I suspect that Europeans seek out and consume news like Americans. But I’m disappointed that the offer of European news hasn’t kept pace with technological change.

As in 1994, a Paris resident like me can buy daily papers, at a neighborhood newsstand, from France, the UK, Germany, Italy, and Spain. The biggest changes are an increase in price, and the inroads made by papers with a European scope, such as The Wall Street Journal (Europe) and The Financial Times.

Most European papers have web sites that feature daily newspaper content, and I can access these pages easily, without paywalls. This is a positive change, but I regret two things:

  • many papers seem to offer watered-down versions of their print editions, whereas I seek out strong or clearly expressed editorial voices;
  • as with print newspapers, it remains difficult to access news from European countries with small populations and distinct languages: Finland, Lithuania, Bulgaria (Cyrillic alphabet), Greece (Greek alphabet).

Radio and television news from European neighbors is as difficult to access in 2010 as it was in 1994. Cable networks seem to favor exotic fare, especially from the Middle East or North Africa, at the expense of leading stations from European neighbors. And radio seems paralyzed by an unwillingness either to use the Internet or to let people abroad know about Internet radio streams.