Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Community newspapers continue to be readers' top choice for news and ads

For the sixth year in a row, the annual readership survey conducted by the National Newspaper Association and the research arm of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism confirms readers in small communities prefer their community newspaper for local news and advertising, Editor & Publisher reports. Seventy-four percent of people served by newspapers with circulations under 15,000 read a local newspaper weekly.

Newspapers came out on top compared to other information sources. More than half of respondents selected the community newspaper as their primary source for local community information, compared to 16 percent seeking information from friends and family, 13.2 percent from television, less than 6 percent from radio and 7.4 percent from the Internet, which could include newsppaer sites. The survey showed that readers prefer print over online versions; 48 percent of those surveyed have never read the local news online. Of the 167 respondents who go online for local news, 52 percent said they used the local newspaper’s website, 25 percent said they used a local television station's website and only 20 percent said they used visited Yahoo, MSN or Google. To see more results from the survey, click here.

Additional information, charts and presentations from the survey are available in the December issues of Publishers’ Auxiliary and will be available on NNA’s website soon.

1 comment:

Howard Owens said...

I wonder how the study looks in communities where there is serious online competition?