A Scarborough Research report flies in the face of headlines we've been seeing about the decline in newspaper readership and demise of newspapers.
The good news is 74% of American adults -- 171 million of us -- still read daily newspapers. The demographics skew toward better-educated, white-collar folks with above-average household incomes. The survey shows 84% of newspaper readers are college grads and 82% are in homes with HH income of $100,000 or more.
So this sounds like great news for the newspaper industry, right? Why, then, are we still hearing about papers losing circulation and ad revenues, as they decimate their newsroom staffing to try to slow the flood of red ink.
The good news is part of a double-edged sword, it seems, with the two edges being print and online.Print readership continues to decline, although not as steeply as the gloom & doom forecasts would indicate. In print, newspapers still reach tens of millions of people every day -- much more than the average prime time network show.
But print advertising in most markets continues to decline, fueled by the tough retail economy. And printing and delivery costs are rising, exacerbating the financial squeeze on publishers. Ad revenues for the year to date are down 29% from a year ago. Even online ad revenues, which make up only 10% of the total, have dropped.
The bright side -- from a readership perspective -- is the tremendous growth in online newspaper readership. Nielsen says nearly 72 million people visit newspaper websites every month -- more than three times the combined print circulation of the 125 biggest dailies.
But... newspapers are still downing in red ink and, as mentioned above, even online ad revenues have dropped.
Part of the problem is that newspapers still haven't figured out how to make real money from all those online readers. Online ads sell for a fraction of what a print display ad can fetch.
It's a real Catch-22 situation. Newspapers are rich in content that people want -- news, information, analysis, advice, entertainment. Historically, though, it's been given away free, and it's hard to get people to pony up for what they've always had for free.
But let's compare it to cable of 30 years ago. Why would anyone pay for TV when it was free for the taking, as long as you had an antenna? But cable gradually added value -- an amazing menu of program options, perfect signal quality, and finally, quality programming that equals or often exceeds what's on free TV.
For newspapers, the solution may not be unlike what happened with cable. Using available technology, tools and apps, or possibly awaiting the introduction of new ones we don't yet know, newspapers may be able to charge and receive subscription fees for offering a wider array of content that's available in very targeted or individualized packages. It might be in the form of a delivery method we haven't yet imagined. Or it might be organized in a way that makes it easy and fun to get exactly the news and information that you deem is important to yourself.
Publishers need to be creative and embrace new technologies. What will the answer be? Time will tell. Hopefully, for the survival of newspapers and the important role they play in a free society, it won't take too much time.