Best and worst cities for newspapers

Interesting.
http://adage.com/article/media/worst-cities-newspapers/242020/

 

Not surprised about Pittsburgh. P-G and TR are pretty good reads.

Atlanta doesn't surprise me, not after the way Cox gutted the AJC.

 

Steve, that trend was happening before the gut. The thing that I noticed is that it appears people in the NE still consider newspapers to be an important source of information. Other locales, particularly in the south, don't feel that way.

 

I'd be interested to see what Las Vegas would be if you took out the population that works on/near the strip.

 

Yeah, it stinks that newspapers aren't universally read across the country. I just remember the glory days of the AJC, but that's another thread entirely.

I thought that was interesting. I could see cities like Hartford and Albany, because not only do you have the Courant and the Times-Union in those cities, a lot of stores carry the NY papers there as well.

Surprised Philadelphia didn't make the list.

 

Nor surprising. So many changes and the public doesn't have confidence in the product that it once did. And to be honest, the talent isn't anywhere near where it was in the late 70's early 80's.

 

I don't know if that list has much to do with the papers as much as it does with demographic trends. It looks a lot like a list of states that gained congressional seats and those states that lost them. Newspaper readership hasn't kept up with the growth in growing states while at the same time the states with a more entrenched (older) population have likely benefitted as the (younger) non-readers have moved south and west.

 

Good point.

 

The AJC in the early 2000s was an example of everything I wanted out of a sports section.

 

I would argue this has almost nothing to do with the quality of the newspaper in each market...It will favor areas with aging populations, areas that have an engaged populace of long-time residents (rather than a very a transient population or a population that has just recently moved to town and doesn't have deep roots).

 

This is definitely true.

 

That article could also be called "Fun with percentages."

Harris County, home of Houston, has a population of 4.2 million. Assuming half of those are adults, that means 500,000 people are reading the Chronicle.

Population of Allegheny County, home of Pittsburgh, is, roughly, 306,000. So about 200,000 more people read the Chronicle, then live in Pittsburgh.

But Pittsburgh, by this measure, is a better newspaper city. Hmm.