Readership Higher In Print Editions Of Newspapers

However, hybrid newspaper readers, those people that read both the online and print versions, outnumber online-only readers, which is surprisingly the lowest readership.

We are learning that in general, people are always on the lookout  for where they can read about the news they are interested in no matter where they are. To most people, news is news. Most people are also much more likely to pay for a printed newspaper than for the online version, which is expected to be viewed for free.

In the book “Trial and Error: U.S Newspapers’ Digital Struggles Toward Inferiority,” the author looks at several studies that show how the print industry backed itself into a wall. It was believed that younger people would not be interested in print, and therefore newspapers were encouraged to focus their efforts on their digital editions and forgo effort on their print versions.

In reality, multiple studies have since proved the contrary. Even among the youngest age groups, print penetration was not only the highest, but also those participants between the 18-29 were actually no more likely to read the news on their smartphones over older readers. 

Younger readers have been determined to be more likely to trust the validity of printed news and literature, and believe that offline formats hold a lot of valuable information. Statistics now more readily show that the ability to get news in so many formats is actually adding the amount of news that people are consuming over all. Those generations that are the youngest and were expected to have little to no interaction with print on a regular basis do in fact read the newspaper quite regularly.