US: "Newspaper business is at the dawn of a Renaissance"

Yesterday, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) released the first Newspaper Audience Database (NADbase) report that includes expanded audience measures. NADbase reports detailed reader demographics, i.e. gender, age group, household income level, and readership for the top U.S. daily newspapers and their web sites. Readership data is provided for the average weekday, the average Sunday as well as cumulative readership of five weekdays or four Sundays. Web site readership, provided by Nielsen//NetRatings, is measured in terms of total unique visitors and page impressions within one month, in this report the month of July. The report will be released every spring and autumn and can be downloaded on www.naa.org/nadbase.

In addition, the NAA analyses market data collected by Scarborough Research. This analysis shows that, for the period from February 2004 to March 2005, 77% of all adults and 68% of 18-34 year olds in the top 50 markets are reading a newspaper during the course of one week. The web site data showed 43 million unique visitors to newspaper web sites for the month of July, i.e. 29% of all Internet users visited a newspaper website. Furthermore, 11 of the 25 top national news and information web sites are owned by newspapers. Newspaper sites are also dominant for local information.

The wide reach of newspapers is surprising after years of falling circulation. Janet Robinson, CEO of New York Times Co. said in USA Today, "We're not saying people shouldn't look at circulation. But we want to be sure we get the full credit for what newspapers have to offer."

John F. Sturm, NAA President and CEO, said, "Readership is the most comparable measure of the value of newspapers to a broad range of consumers and advertisers, and this data demonstrates the value newspapers continue to provide in reaching younger readers ... NADbase is the first step of a major industry initiative to engage with advertisers on the issues critical to their media buying decisions. This first version of NADbase provides extensive information on the audience of our core products and online sites." Jay R. Smith, NAA chairman and president of Cox Newspapers Inc said that if someone were to ask, where news come from, the honest answer would be newspapers. "For too long, however, newspapers only came in one form - ink on paper. Suddenly, all of that has changed. Newspapers still arrive the traditional way, but they also come in compact and tab sizes. They now offer free editions, targeted editions and editions in languages other than English. They've gone digital and now arrive 24 hours a day, seven days a week, via online sites.The newspaper business is at the dawn of a Renaissance." However, Miles Groves, media economist of MG Strategic Research, said in USA Today, "Do I believe this is going to increase newspaper ad share? Probably not. You're competing with people (in TV and the Internet) who measure results every day. Twice a year won't be adequate." With regard to this problem, Sturm said that "there are going to be a lot of conversations" about publishing the report more frequently. Source: Newspaper Association of America (NAA), USA Today