Web-Only Readers Account For Up To 15 Percent of Newspaper Audience: Study

Stop the web — websites help build newspaper audience! Web-only newspaper readers account for between two and 15 percent of a newspaper brand’s total audience, translating to “hundreds of thousands” of readers in larger markets, according to a white paper by Scarborough Research. Scarborough, which analysed the combined web and print readership of the top 25 regional newspaper markets in the US, is pushing the findings as a positive for the beleaguered newspaper industry. Gary Meo, SVP, print and internet services: “Newspapers are successfully extending their audience online. Newspaper websites are attracting people that may not read the printed paper, resulting in audience growth overall.
— The Arizona Republic, Tampa Tribune and Washington Post are all cited as regional publications performing particularly well in terms of building online audience. The Republic reaches 56 per cent of the market, but adding web users to that the figure climbs to 59 per cent — that 3 percent translates as 119,501 new readers; 77 percent of AR’s audience is print only, 7 percent web only and 17 percent read both.
— Online newspaper readers are educated, affluent and younger than print readers. For the sister sites TampaTrib.com and TBO.com in an average week, 30 percent of users are aged 18-34 compared to 22 percent of print readers.
The PDF is worth skimming for the overview of circulation figures vs web readership. But briefly:
— WaPo was listed with the highest percentage of “integrated” web and print readers at 25 percent, or 778,502 people. NYTimes has 22 percent and Boston Globe, 21 percent.
Tampa Tribune has the highest proportion of web-only readers: 15 percent of its readership. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has 10 percent and the Boston Globe, 9 percent.
Seems surprising the web readership isn’t higher, but then I would say that.
Release | Full report

This article originally appeared in MediaGuardian.

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