…. so, if you want to reach the younguns, forget print, you gotta be on the Web. Right? Well, maybe, sorta, and depends. Some very clear trends are coming out of our market research here in the News Tower. One is immutable: Baby Boomers and their parents are diehard newspaper readers — and will likely remain so until, well, you get the point. Seventy-seven percent of 55-plus adults read the Sunday newspaper — an increase of nine points since 2005. Sixty-eight percent read the daily newspaper, which is the same as 2005.
(They are also big Web users, so don’t go thinking Boomers don’t do Web. We do. More on that next post.)
Half the 40-54-year-olds read the daily Register Star during the week. On Sunday, the number is 11 points higher for both groups. So aging GenXers and middle-aged Boomers are hanging on to their print papers pretty tightly. (P.S. The numbers are identical to what they were in 2005)
So, what about the younguns? Perhaps surprisingly to a lot of folks who think young ones are Web-only, the under 40 crowd in Winnebago and Boone counties are newspaper readers, too. One out of four adults 18-34 reads the newspaper during the week (about the same as in 2005). And, 37 percent of adults between 35-49 read the daily newspaper. On Sundays, those percentages increase to 45 percent of 18-34-year-olds; and 51 percent of the 35-49 year olds — again, about the same as 2005.
We are transforming into an information center that delivers news, information and advertising across multiple platforms — magazines, daily/Sunday papers, online, and someday holograms — but that traditional newspaper in the Rock River Valley isn’t disappearing anytime soon. We’re a newspaper reading market.
Related posts:
Where are these stats coming from?
Stats are from market research done in April in Winnebago and Boone counties by national research firm Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo. Find them on the Web at http://www.cmbinc.com. The Register Star has conducted formal market research every three years for decades.
Well, that;s interesting, and good for you and everything, but isn’t the question a little different at this point? Shouldn’t you be asking, where are you getting your news and information from today compared to 1, 3, 5 years ago? And if it is less and less from the daily newspaper…why>
Good questions, Millard. And, since we do research ones like them, some quick answesr: I — we — are getting our news and information from increasingly more integrated and diverse sources: Web, magazines, newsletters, audio and video casts, television, radio, weekly and daily/Sunday newspapers. And technology and innovation will expand the platforms beyond our dreams over the next decade.
The key for my future is not about choosing the “right” platform, but about feeding news and advertising content to ALL those platforms.
Linda Grist Cunningham writes:
“but that traditional newspaper in the Rock River Valley isn’t disappearing anytime soon”
That may be true, but it is clear to me that what our daily newspaper actually does has changed dramatically over the last half century or so, and not for the better, in my opinion.
Newspapers used to be as much about advocacy as about advertising. Rockford’s two papers sometimes took different sides on issues of importance to the community, and in so doing fostered public debate on these issues.
The RRStar does publish editorial positions on issues, but I can’t help but conclude from what I’ve seen of them that many of its positions are designed to promote the business interests of its advertisers and shareholders, or at least do them no harm.
And as for what is published in most of the rest of your “traditional paper” as “news”, Ms. Cunningham, much of it seems to me to be mostly about fostering consumption of the things that are advertised in it and hardly ever about promoting critical thinking about issues of importance to the community, many of which, over the years, have been carefully ignored by your publication.
And then there is the lost art, at least in Rockford, of investigative journalism.
When was the last time the RRStar conducted any sort of investigative journalism?
Maybe I’ve been out of the loop, but the last time I remember this happening occurred more than 30 years ago when RRStar reporters went out to follow city workers and catch them goofing off on the job.
Has our town and area become so virtuous since then that there is no longer any reason to go looking under rocks in this Rock River valley?
I think that the “traditional newspaper” disappeared from our town years ago, first with the merger of the Register Republic with the Morning Star, and then with the end of local ownership of those two publications through purchase by Gannett, Inc.
As a result, although we still have a daily newspaper in this town, it more often than not behaves more like a Thrifty Nickel with delusions of grandeur than like a traditional newspaper from back when it really meant something to be one.