Monday, April 19, 2010

Conventional wisdom: Young people do not read newspapers. Except studies show a fair amount do

News reports last week of a new survey of news consumption in Britain shows adults under age 35 significantly increased their consumption of news in the past three years. And more are getting their news from print newspapers.

A McKinsey survey says average daily news consumption in the U.K. increased from 60 to 72 minutes in three years - "an increase driven almost entirely by people under the age of 35", according to a McKinsey spokesperson.

While young adults "overwhelmingly prefer to get their news from television and the Internet," the report says, newspapers remain the most trusted medium. The report said 66 percent of respondents describe the paper as "informative and confidence inspiring" compared to 44 percent for television and just 12 percent for the Web.

"This suggests that newspapers have further scope to go beyond news, to drive reader interest and advertising revenues at the same time," a spokesperson wrote.

And "interest" in getting news from newspapers has grown, the survey found. Among people aged 16 to 24, interest in newspaper news grew from 53 to 64 percent since a 2006 survey. Among 25-34 year olds, interest grew from 51 to 61 percent.

A study released last month from a 2009 survey of Canadian newspaper readers found print newspaper readership among young adults roughly the same as the general population.

A study by NADbank reported that 71 percent of adults ages 18-24 read a print version of a newspaper in the past seven days, nearly identical to the percentage of all adults age 18 and older (73 percent). Young adults were less likely than the general adult population (37 percent vs. 47 percent) to have responded they read a newspaper "yesterday" however, mirroring historical trends which show younger adults tend to be more often consumers of single and pass-along copies (and therefore not reading every day).

2 comments:

  1. Good news. Hopefully, young adults in U.S. are reading newspapers too! We live such busy lives that taking a 1/2 to read a newspaper or book (non electronically) can only create a more community conscious individual.

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  2. I guess the alleged "study" managed to completely ignore the growth of talk radio. This is a growing source of honest news that is not presented by the state-run media.

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