Pew survey: 42% would not miss daily newspaper if it folded
March 15, 2009 at 6:00 am by Jim JohnsonBy Jim Johnson
PoHo Contributor
Jim Johnson is the creator of The State of Sunshine blog.
What would you do if the Tampa Tribune or St. Petersburg Times (or both) folded?
That is, essentially, one of the questions asked in a national study.
The Pew Research Center for People and the Press released results of a study asking about Americans’ attitudes toward their newspapers. The news may not be good for the ailing newspaper industry.
Pew researchers asked two pertinent questions. First, they wanted to know how American’s felt about the possibility of newspapers shutting down. Now I’d like you to think about the local daily newspaper in your area. If there is more than one, think about the one you read most often. If that newspaper went out of business and no longer published in print or online, how much would this hurt civic life in your community?
Less than half, 43 percent, said it would hurt “a lot” while another 31 percent said “some.” The biggest reason most felt it would hurt the community: People rely on the newspaper for local news.
Then the Center asked about the effect of newspaper closings on the respondent. How much would you personally miss reading your local daily newspaper if it were no longer available?
These results should be a warning sign to the news industry: Only 1 in 3 said they would miss their local paper “a lot.” Forty-two percent answered “not much” or “not at all.” FORTY-TWO PERCENT WOULD NOT MISS THEIR NEWSPAPERS!
As if that wasn’t bad enough, it breaks down almost along age lines. We already knew that newspaper readers skewed older, but the poll shows this. Fifty-five (55 percent) of those over 65 said they would miss the newspaper “a lot” and only 26 percent said they wouldn’t miss it.
Here are the numbers:
Here are some of the reasons:
Has anyone started a pool for when Media General closes the Trib (or sells it to the Poynter Institute)? I’ll take June 2011.
