Randy Bennett

Telling Statistics on the News Business

Jeff:

Let me offer some additional statistics on the newspaper industry. As a representative of the newspaper trade association, naturally the data will be more upbeat, but nonetheless paint a more complete picture of the industry. Clearly, the industry is facing huge financial challenges and everyone I speak to agrees for the need to re-structure and re-focus newspaper enterprises. This is not an argument for status quo. But if you step back, the medium itself is not in dire straits – audience is holding steady and newspapers continue to be an effective advertising vehicle.

For example:

• Scarborough Research reports that more than 100 million adults read a printed newspaper on an average weekday (and more than 115 million on Sunday). Compare that to 94 million that watch the Super Bowl, 23 million who have viewed American Idol and 64 million who typically watch the late local news.

• Meanwhile, newspapers’ digital audience has grown more than 60 percent since 2005. More than 40 percent of active Internet users visit a newspaper Web site in a typical month.

• Newspaper readership in the top 50 markets has declined about 6 percent in the past five years (according to Scarborough). Compare that to a 10 percent decline in prime time audience and a 6 percent decline in early evening local TV news in 2007 alone.

• 62 percent of 18-24 year olds and 25-34 year olds read a newspaper in an average week. 64 percent and 66 percent, respectively, visited a newspaper Web site in the past seven days.

• According to Google research, 56 percent of respondents to a 2008 survey either researched or purchased at least one product they saw in a newspaper the previous month. Of those who researched a product from a print ad, 67 percent research online and 48 percent visited a store. For those who saw a product online and then saw it in a newspaper, 48 percent considered the product more trustworthy and 52 percent were more likely to buy the product. The research results are available at: www.naa.org/docs/Publi....

• A recent poll by independent research Doug Schoen showed that 75 percent of adults and 84 percent of “elites” read newspapers everyday or several times a week to inform them about the election. More than half agreed that newspapers provided definitive information that guided both the networks and cable stations in reporting the news. A summary of the results appears here: www.huffingtonpost.com....

• According to consultant John Morton in a recent AJR article, newspaper companies that have reported results for the first nine months of 2008 had a weighted average operating profit margin of 11.3 percent, clearly down but still above what is typical for most non-media businesses. He concludes that article by saying “Overall, the beleaguered newspaper industry's financial health has been weakened but remains healthy by most measures. In this environment, that is an achievement.”

Obviously, I have a million of these factoids. Please let me know if more would be helpful.

Randy Bennett
SVP, Business Development
Newspaper Association of America