Who’s Reading the Newspaper?

by Brian Reich | 18 Apr 2006, 2:00am

The Center for Media Research reports new data about the readership of newspapers and online news  (taken from a study released by the Newspaper Association of America).   The topilines:

• 116 million adults are reading the newspaper over the course of a week and 55 million Internet users visit a newspaper Web site over the course of a month.
• Unique visitors to newspaper Web sites jumped 21 percent in 2005 and page views increased by 43 percent over that same period.  
• Newspaper web sites attracted 14 percent more 25- to 34-year-olds and 9 percent more 18- to 24-year-olds.
• 78 percent of the 149 million adults who live in the top 50 markets read a newspaper over the course of five weekdays and one Sunday.  
• 69 percent of 18- to 24-year olds in the these markets are reading a newspaper during the course of a week.
• 65.7 percent of consumers with household incomes of $150,000 or more read the newspaper on an average weekday, and more than 71.7 percent on an average Sunday.

And in the least surprising, yet likely to attract the most attention TAGS:

• Newspapers own 11 of the top 25 national news and information Web sites, and locally, newspapers provide the dominant information site in most of the top 75 markets.

The newspaper industry still has a lot of work to do before it completely transforms itself from a print-only news medium to the propriters of highly interactive information centers.   I’m still not entirely sure they will succeed in their transformation  – it is  entirely possible that when we look at similar data in five or ten years that the newspaper industry will barely be represented in these studies and that the new information providers will be individual citizens, full-time information aggregators, or some new category we haven’t thought of yet.   I hope newspaper companies do find success online because the history and knowledge of how good journalism must be conducted is wrapped up in them and it would be a loss for us all if that wasn’t carried over to new and developing mediums.

TAGS : Citizen Journalism Journalism News Research