When it comes to accuracy online, students agree newspapers are by far more accurate than news on the Internet. However, information online is looked at in terms of consensus more than accuracy, Peter Duffy, columnist at The Chronicle Herald in Halifax, Nova Scotia, wrote Thursday.

“If we go online and find five different articles and they come to the same consensus, then that's what we're going to believe, whether it's right or not,” one high school (secondary school) student told Duffy. “You're trying to find a commonality. It doesn't have to be necessarily correct; just believe what everyone else generally believes.”

Another student chimes in, saying that online, he can “access papers from Canada, Britain, Hong Kong and Kuwait on the same subject. . . . I'm getting the viewpoint from four distinct, different cultures here, four different agendas. (If) they all came to the same conclusion, it's a fairly safe assumption that that was the correct conclusion.”

And when it comes to blogs, the students said they are not looking for facts there, because blogs are opinions. Old media is still more reliable than new media, and facts can best be found in newspapers, the student say, according to Duffy.

Because of this, newspapers will survive, the students tell Duffy. They may not be able to maintain the same reader numbers in the past, but people will always want them for the hard facts. Today, the newspaper is just the beginning of the information process, and newspapers need to learn to fill their niche, Duffy states. One student “reminds me that people used to think the advent of radio would hurt newspaper circulation; it was the same with the coming of television. Instead, each new information medium found its niche and was adopted. The Internet is just the next step.”

And when it comes to attracting young readers, the equation is simple: “Don't pander to the young, they suggest. Don't change what you're writing to compete with the Internet,” Duffy states, adding that one student tells him, “If what you say is interesting and relevant to us, we'll listen.”

To read Duffy's full column, visit The Chronicle Herald Web site.