This afternoon I was talking to one of my co-workers about the decline of newspaper readership and circulation. She just joined us at AIR from one of the local publication and had some pretty cool insights on the world of newspaper publishing. In the course of our conversation we talked about how neither of us subscribed to newspapers – let alone go out of our way to read one. Granted I grab a copy of the Wall Street Journal which comes to our company – but even then I only glance through the articles and realize that I’ve see the headlines through various RSS feeds I have in my reader. I sometimes save it for weekend reading.
Everyone knows print is in decline. Just today, the NYT reported a 10.1% drop in revenue in July. Ouch. So, how many read newspapers and who are they? Coincidentally, eMarketer happened to publish some numbers today based on research by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Here is an excerpt:
Consumers who read newspapers on the Internet are well-educated. In the report, Pew said 44% of college graduates read an online paper every day, compared with 11% of those with a high school education or less.
Pew also said the proportion of Americans who read a traditional newspaper on a typical day has declined by about 40% since the early 1990s, and the percentage who watch the nightly network news regularly fell by one-half.