Print Readers/Website Readers -- What's the ratio?

[jaredk]

I know a major metro's numbers on this. I'm surprised and I'm inviting guesses as to what the ratio is.

What percentage of print readers NEVER read the newspaper's website?
What percentage of website readers NEVER read the print edition?

I'm talking about a big-time print/website combo in an affluent, highly educated metro area.

 

[kleeda]

I don't know, but I bet they all read BLOGS!!!!

 

[Pete Incaviglia]

I don't know, but here's something that happened in my chain recently:

A corporate/management email accidentally got sent to the newsrooms of TWO papers in our chain. It was about the internet hits of one of our sister papers.

The paper is serves a city of about 250,000 people. It's circulation is 70,000.

Anyway, we get an email that breaks down all the internet hits from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Remember, the print circulation is 70,000.

The hits on the website? 16,000.

And people are turning to the internet. My ass.

 

[Babs]

What percentage of print readers NEVER read the newspaper's website?
What percentage of website readers NEVER read the print edition?

I'll bite. I would guess 70% of print readers never read the website, and 20% of the website readers never read print. Some of those 20% are going to be outside the delivery bounds, so they can't even if they wanted to.

 

[WriteThinking]

I know a major metro's numbers on this. I'm surprised and I'm inviting guesses as to what the ratio is.

What percentage of print readers NEVER read the newspaper's website?
What percentage of website readers NEVER read the print edition?

I'm talking about a big-time print/website combo in an affluent, highly educated metro area.

Not having seen or heard any particular numbers of the major metro in my area, I'm going to take a shot in the dark, argue the opposite of Babs, and guess 20-80.

I think a lot of people who look at the print edition also look at the web site. But I doubt the really regular web readers look at the paper edition much at all anymore.

 

[jaredk]

What percentage of print readers NEVER read the newspaper's website?
What percentage of website readers NEVER read the print edition?

I'll bite. I would guess 70% of print readers never read the website, and 20% of the website readers never read print. Some of those 20% are going to be outside the delivery bounds, so they can't even if they wanted to.

A winner! Almost exactly. The most recent numbers, only a week old, were 70.7 percent and 18.7 percent. There were 10 TIMES as many print-only readers as there were web-only readers.
Didn't surprise Babs, obviously, but it did me and it's distressing to think that newspapers are doing no better at the web than that. We are giving away the franchise to aggregators. Seems to me these numbers argue that a website should be a far, far different animal than its parent newspaper.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Or, it could mean that newspapers are still an attractive product.

 

[Babs]

A winner! Almost exactly. The most recent numbers, only a week old, were 70.7 percent and 18.7 percent. There were 10 TIMES as many print-only readers as there were web-only readers.
Didn't surprise Babs, obviously, but it did me and it's distressing to think that newspapers are doing no better at the web than that. We are giving away the franchise to aggregators. Seems to me these numbers argue that a website should be a far, far different animal than its parent newspaper.

Yay me. Why can't I ever win prizes with money though?

My interpretation of the numbers is very different than yours. To me, it's all demographics and facts about paper and machines. There are lots of older readers like my grandparents who don't know how to turn on a computer. But a youngish person running around with a laptop is going to find an abandoned paper on the bus and pick it up -- they just will. Over time, there will be more laptop folks than grandparents. Thus the world moves to the web. I can't tell you how to make money on ads, especially in this economic climate, but I can tell you that print-only readers will eventually die off. Literally.

I don't think this says anything about what the product should contain. It just says you have two types of readers. I think you target the type that will grow.

 

[dooley_womack1]

But I don't think reading a "paper" online will ever become a big-time Internet activity. Off the top of my head, these are surely more sought-out Web activities: porn, BLOGS!, message boards, auction sites, Craigslist, MySpace, Yahoo, Google, ESPN, porn, Amazon, TMZ and other gossipy sites, BLOGS!, trip-mapping sites, plane-ticket sites, mindless games, and porn.

Is it really more of gamble to try to make the paper product more popular to a new generation?

 

[kleeda]

I said this on another thread. Newspapers are becoming a leisure activity. Less leisure time, fewer newspapers. I can't act like I'm working and read the newspaper, you know?

 

[dooley_womack1]

Then again, your newspaper usage can't be monitored by a keystroke-reading device.

 

[kleeda]

Then again, your newspaper usage can't be monitored by a keystroke-reading device.

Have you ever actually known of anyone getting caught for anything other than dowloading porn? Most IT departments can barely keep the system running, you think they're actually monitoring keystrokes? Sure they can, but will they? Nah.

 

[dooley_womack1]

Then again, your newspaper usage can't be monitored by a keystroke-reading device.

Have you ever actually known of anyone getting caught for anything other than dowloading porn? Most IT departments can barely keep the system running, you think they're actually monitoring keystrokes? Sure they can, but will they? Nah.

I've read about plenty of instances in various industries -- being fired for e-mails, stealing the company's time, etc. I was more or less offering that thought in jest, but if businesses decided to ever clamp down on non-productive Internet use...

 

[WriteThinking]

What percentage of print readers NEVER read the newspaper's website?
What percentage of website readers NEVER read the print edition?

I'll bite. I would guess 70% of print readers never read the website, and 20% of the website readers never read print. Some of those 20% are going to be outside the delivery bounds, so they can't even if they wanted to.

A winner! Almost exactly. The most recent numbers, only a week old, were 70.7 percent and 18.7 percent. There were 10 TIMES as many print-only readers as there were web-only readers.
Didn't surprise Babs, obviously, but it did me and it's distressing to think that newspapers are doing no better at the web than that. We are giving away the franchise to aggregators. Seems to me these numbers argue that a website should be a far, far different animal than its parent newspaper.

This sounds like it should be hopeful for newspapers, an argument for trying to build them up, emphasize and promote them more, instead of less. It's what I wish, and can only hope, would happen.

A very real problem now, however, is that newspaper companies have been cut back so much, budget- and staff-wise, that editors and managers are being forced to make hard choices about where and how to divide and allot resources.

And instead of serving and working with both the print and electronic formats well, the strained and stretched resources only go so far, so that nobody gets the kind of product that they could otherwise out of either side.

Current company budget and staffing levels -- and profit-margin demands -- don't seem to support all media efforts well.

Given those options, as Babs said, companies are making another choice, and working with an eye toward the future -- at the cost of the print newspaper.

 

[dragonzo]

Just my two cents... I was talking to my barber (40s, typical good ol' boy) and he told me he reads all his newspapers online; ours, the one in the nearby city where he lives and the one from his hometown.
Admittedly that's a very small sample, but I don't think we can continue to think only young folks go online for news and older folks won't.

 

[Babs]

I was talking to my barber (40s, typical good ol' boy) and he told me he reads all his newspapers online; ours, the one in the nearby city where he lives and the one from his hometown.
Admittedly that's a very small sample, but I don't think we can continue to think only young folks go online for news and older folks won't.

People in their 40s were in their 20s when the internet first spread. I wouldn't hesitate to consider them part of the internet generation.

 

[jaredk]

The demographic that matters most if newspapers are to get a hold of the future: the 21-34 college grad with $75K+ household income.

Those folks are going to the web dramatically.

In the last 5 yrs at this metro, web readership for that group has risen from 30 percent to almost 60 percent. Meanwhile, that group's print readership has declined from 50 percent to 30. In short, the reading habits have virtually reversed themselves in only 5 years. Researchers also say the change is accelerating.

To remember in all this: that 21-34 college grad group is still a small part of the total readership. And while it can not be ignored, neither can newspapers ignore the greater majority of its audience.

It is a balancing act that no one has mastered, but I'm wondering if there might be an answer in something I've yet to see. The most popular news websites are aggregators, such as Drudge and Deadspin. When will a newspaper be daring enough to use its website for its original content AND be an aggregator?

 

[dooley_womack1]

In what you're saying, one could infer that the only magic the Internet has is one-stop convenience, that newspapers still have a lot to offer, but people are more and more getting that content from aggregator sites that steal link to it. In the end, people say, "I saw that on Drudge," not "I saw that on the New York Times."

 

[pressmurphy]

I don't know, but here's something that happened in my chain recently:

A corporate/management email accidentally got sent to the newsrooms of TWO papers in our chain. It was about the internet hits of one of our sister papers.

The paper is serves a city of about 250,000 people. It's circulation is 70,000.

Anyway, we get an email that breaks down all the internet hits from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Remember, the print circulation is 70,000.

The hits on the website? 16,000.

And people are turning to the internet. My ass.

Read that as an indictment of that particular paper and its site. A property that size should be doing at least 250K page views a day Monday thru Friday, which means they should have done 100-150K in that particular time range.

 

[PHINJ]

Then again, your newspaper usage can't be monitored by a keystroke-reading device.

Have you ever actually known of anyone getting caught for anything other than dowloading porn? Most IT departments can barely keep the system running, you think they're actually monitoring keystrokes? Sure they can, but will they? Nah.

Don't kid yourself. Your IT department can go back and find anything you've ever typed at work. This was proven to me recently.