As Print Newspapers Decline, How Does Digital Fill the Void?

In light of such turmoil in the publishing industry, I was interested in investigating the viability of the digital publishing platform as the print medium encounters more and more challenges. Are newspapers losing gross audience, or is the audience simply shifting online? How do these online and print audiences differ? How are newspaper sites performing relative to other online news outlets?

According to Comscore Plan Metrix, the overall readership of print newspapers* is down 11 percent in the past year, from 86.4 million in April 2008 to 76.7 million in April 2009, but the total number of visitors to the online newspapers category is up 5 percent during that same period. Clearly, the decline in the number of print readers (-9.7 million people) is far greater than the increase in the number of online newspaper readers (+3.2 million). At the same time, the number of readers of news content online has increased by 8.6 million people. These data indicate that while some print newspaper readers are indeed switching to reading newspapers online, more are switching to reading news online at sites other than newspapers.

Source: Comscore Plan Metrix; Total U.S., Persons 18+

* Newspaper Print Readers includes Internet users 18+ who read at least one of the following daily papers in last 7 days: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post, Detroit Free Press, Financial Times, Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Milwaukee, Journal, New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post.

To gain more insight into readership trends, I did some further analysis by looking at three mutually exclusive segments of newspaper readers:

1. Those who only read print newspapers
2. Those who read both print and online newspaper formats
3. Those who only read the online format

Here we see clearly that readers of print newspapers are abandoning the format. The audience who reads only the print edition declined 12 percent vs. year ago, while those who read the print edition and visited a newspaper site also declined -- by 10 percent. On a slightly more positive note for newspapers, visitation to sites in the online newspapers category grew 26 percent vs. year ago among those who did not read the print edition.

Source: Comscore Plan Metrix; Total U.S., Persons 18+

However, if we look at the total combined newspaper reading audience, we find that readership is down 2-percent overall – certainly less alarming than the 12 percent decline among print-only readers but a decline nonetheless, and one that is occurring in the face of an increase of 6% in the number of visitors to sites in the overall news category. So as print newspaper readership declines, we are not seeing a sufficient increase in online newspaper readership to offset the decline. Rather, readers appear to be shifting to non-newspaper sources of online news.

These trends demonstrate the challenge for newspapers to more deeply engage online with the growing number of consumers who do not get any of their news information from the print or online editions of their newspapers. Beyond looking for approaches that will attract these consumers to their own sites, the newspapers must explore alternative ways – including using social media or distributed content as potential distribution models - to reach this audience as the Internet becomes the preferred medium for news consumption. By continuing to evolve their services in a way that aligns with their consumers’ preferences, they may be able to identify alternative ways to offset the revenue lost from their declining print channel.