US: Newspaper readers overwhelmingly use print version over online

Posted by Liz Webber on July 31, 2009 at 2:51 PM

While there have been many examinations into whether people prefer to get their news from the Internet or traditional media, Ryan Chittum argues in the Columbia Journalism Review that those who read newspapers overwhelmingly do so via the print editions rather than on the papers' websites. By Chittum's calculations, 92 percent of newspaper reading is done in print and 8 percent takes place online.

To come up with these figures, Chittum used the latest Nielsen Online data and compared it to newspaper circulation and readership numbers. Chittum created a table of the top five newspaper websites, but his main example was the venerable New York Times.

According to Nielsen, NYTimes.com had 17.4 million visitors in June, who spent an average of 14:29 on the site. Multiply those numbers together, and visitors spent 4.2 million hours on the Times website last month.

On the print side, the Times boasts 1.1 million subscribers (adjusted by Chittum for Sunday-only readers), who surveys indicate spend an average of 30 minutes per day reading the paper. That comes out to 16.1 million hours a month. However, the Newspaper Association of America claims each copy of the Times is read by 2.2 people. Even using Chittum's more conservative estimate of 1.6 readers per copy, that means readers put 26.4 million hours into perusing the Times each month - about six and a half times the hours spent on the website.

Other newspapers in the top five show even wider gaps in time spent using print versus online, which is how Chittum came up with his 92 percent versus 8 percent comparison.

So some people spend a lot of time reading the newspaper - so what? As Chittum points out, an engaged reader who pays to subscribe to a publication has far more worth for an advertiser than someone who spends less time viewing free website content. The data also seem to justify newspapers hesitating to invest huge amounts into their websites; the "best" readers are still opting for paper and ink.

However, Chittum admits his methods are not the most precise, and contradict the generally accepted trend towards online and away from print. It's possible the disparity can be blamed in part on the newspapers themselves for an inability to attract visitors to their websites. There are plenty of other options for news on the Internet, which people may prefer to say, NYTimes.com.

Journalist Martin Langveld carried out a similar analysis of print metrics a few months ago, with pretty much the same conclusions. While the numbers are intriguing, they do not mean much for the broader scheme of the newspaper industry. Advertisers have cut back across the board, especially in print media, and are unlikely to reverse that trend. Although 100 million newspaper readers show print is far from dead as a useful and sought after medium, publishers will have to come up with a new business model to preserve that medium in some form or another.

Source: Columbia Journalism Review