Editor & Publisher reports that a new study from Scarborough Research reveals that 74% of adults in the US read a newspaper either online or in print in the last week.
This number counters the notion that newspapers no longer impact consumers. “Given the fragmentation of media choices, printed newspapers are holding onto their audiences relatively well,” Gary Meo, Scarborough’s senior vice president of print and digital media services, said in a statement.
…
Furthermore, Scarborough found that 79% of adults who are employed in “white collar” jobs read a newspaper online or in print; that 82% of adults with a household income of $100,000 or more read a newspaper in print or online; and 84% of adults who have college or advanced degrees do the same.
So newspapers are holding on to their audience but nobody wants to pay for them.
Great.
Without a breakdown of % that reads on paper versus online and demographic information (age, income, etc) for each subset then this survey result is kind of useless.
People still read news – probably people are reading more news than ever. The question of the day is “how many people are reading their news on print” and who are those people (if they’re all over 65 that’s as relevant as the total number).
And none of these numbers in and of themselves answer the questions about how many people actually read comics in the newspaper — not everyone reads all of the comics in the paper let alone any.
I think it should read “74-year-old adults read print newspapers”
@Xavier: I agree, the lack of a print vs. web breakdown is frustrating.
The real trouble is that there’s growth online vs. decline in print–while ad rates are dismal online, “replacing print dollars with digital pennies,” as the expression goes.
We know that people like to read news. The trouble is how to finance news when news providers insist on providing it to people in a medium that doesn’t support advertising at sufficiently high levels.
Blow up the Internet! I would pay to read TDC in print.