US: Decline in newspaper readership halts

Posted by Jean Yves Chainon on January 8, 2007 at 4:12 PM

This is not good, it’s great news for any editor or manager in the newspaper business. A Gallup poll revealed there was a halt in the decline of Americans who rely on newspapers as their primary news source. Simultaneously, the growth of online readership is slowing down.

TV news still led the way for most Americans, but 44% of them still rely on newspapers for their news. As opposed to ‘only’ 22% who use the Internet. A total of 57% of Americans (including the 44% daily users) read the newspaper very regularly, several times per week.

The good news is that the decline in regular readers seems to have halted. Up at 47% in 2002, it had sloped down to 44% in 2004, but has stagnated since then.

"The rapid growth in the Internet news audience may have slowed in the last two years, and cable news viewership has declined," Gallup reports.

How about newspapers also put a halt - to their self-pity - and focus on sustaining their solid base of readership? While this study is encouraging, only 7% of Americans say they read a national newspaper every day.

Source: Editor & Publisher