Just When Newspapers Thought It Couldn’t Get Much Worse, New Research Says:
It's Not Just the Young Deserting Print Editions for the Internet -- So Are Adults

Philip M. Stone April 28, 2005

One of the most remarkable aspects of the US newspaper business that draws in some $47 billion in advertising annually at about a 20% margin, is that for all those high finances the very delivery of the end product to the consumer often rests in the hands of a 13-year-old kid waking up at 5 a.m.’ getting on his bicycle, and delivering the newspaper each morning with a usually well aimed throw onto the front doorstep.

It’s an American tradition that has changed little over the years except that as the paper has got bulkier the throw got shorter!

What American publishers desperately want now is that those same kids who deliver the newspaper also read it!

Slippage in the young reading the daily newspaper and instead getting their news on the Internet is well documented, but new research indicates that over the past four years the number of adults who prefer the Internet as their main source of news has risen by 35%

The study, by JupiterResearch, said that 26% of online adults prefer the Internet for their international and national news, compared to 19% four years ago. About 50% of adults who go online look at news.

The good news for traditional outlets such as newspapers and broadcasters is that they are still preferred for local coverage.

But for young adults – those 18 – 24  that newspapers are frantically trying to keep --  the results are not encouraging. Some 40% say they prefer television as their primary source of news, followed by 33% for the Internet, and just 10% prefer newspapers.

US newspaper readership has dropped 7.1 million in the past 15 years, an 11% decline. But a report by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) claims that in the top 50 markets in the US eight out of 10 adults read a newspaper at least once a week and five out of 10 says they read a newspaper every day. While those numbers are down just slightly from a year earlier they are in stark contrast to 40 years ago when 81% of adults said they read a daily newspaper.

The age divide is also startling. Just 39% of adults aged between 18-34 read a newspaper compared with some 70% of adults 55 and over. The average age of a newspaper reader in the US is 53. and that gives the delicate problem  that newspaper readers are dying faster than they can be replaced.

Even more reason to get those delivery boys to take out a subscription.