CJR reporting:
Alan Mutter’s post the other day—“The incredible shrinking newspaper audience”—got me thinking: is the newspaper audience really shrinking?
So I called him up, and we’re going to disagree. A lot depends on what you call an audience.
But, really, it’s growing.
Alan cites studies
from Pew and elsewhere that say (I’m condensing for the sake of
brevity; go ahead and click through): The percentage of people who used a
print newspaper in the last week to get local news ranged from 36
percent in metro areas to 42 percent in small cities (much lower than
during print’s heyday); and Web penetration isn’t much better; that 44
percent of Americans own smartphones and 22 percent own tablets, a
doubling of tablet penetration in just one year; and that two-thirds of
consumers go to “three or more sources” for local news each week.
He also cites an NYT study
that says while 53 percent of the Boomer generation (those 55 and
older) said they read print newspapers, only 22 percent of Millenials
(ages 18-34) and 32 percent of Generation Xers (ages 35-54) used the
medium and that “smartphone use is far higher in the younger cohorts
than among Boomers.”
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/weakened_newspapers_expanding.php
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