By Erik Sass
mediapost.com
Newspaper publishers hoping to staunch the flow of ad dollars out of the medium got some help this week from a Scarborough Research study, which found that 74% of American adults either read the newspaper or visit a newspaper Web site at least once a week.
These data indicate newspapers still enjoy considerable reach; whether advertisers will be impressed by these figures is another story.
Scarborough’s latest Integrated Newspaper Audience study revealed that 171 million American adults read a newspaper’s print or online version at least once a week.
What’s more, well-heeled and well-educated consumers index even higher in newspaper readership, with 79% of white-collar workers, 82% of adults with household incomes over $100,000 per year, and 84% of college graduates reading print or online newspaper content at least once a week.
Of course, newspapers are still faced with a long-term decline in print readership, but the print versions still reach tens of millions of American adults. Commenting on the findings, Gary Meo, Scarborough’s vice president of print and digital media services, stated: “While our data does show that print newspaper readership is slowly declining… given the fragmentation of media choices, printed newspapers are holding onto their audiences relatively well.”
Impressive online figures show that at least in terms of audience — newspapers have successfully transitioned to digital media.
According to a separate study by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America, between the first half of 2004 and the first half of 2009, newspaper Web sites’ total unique audience almost doubled from a monthly average of 41,147,206 to 71,831,867.
In terms of active reach, altogether, newspaper Web sites jumped from 27.1% of all U.S. Internet users in the first six months of 2004 to 41.8% of all Internet users in the first six months of 2009. . . READ FULL STORY
