Chihak : Calling the shots on newspapers’ fate
by Michael A. Chihak on Dec. 08, 2007, under Opinion
In Tucson, the combined readership of two daily news- papers, the Citizen and the Star, and the unique visitors of three Web sites - tucsoncitizen.com, azstarnet.com and tucson.com - reach 63.7 percent of adults in the Tucson metro area.
“I read about eight newspapers in a day. When I’m in a town with only one newspaper, I read it eight times.”
Will Rogers,
humorist, commentator
(1879-1935)
Don’t believe all those people who say news- papers are terminally ill.
It ain’t true.
This week’s news that advertising revenue declines led to layoffs of 11 Arizona Daily Star staff members – our competitors, our colleagues, our friends – was a punch in the gut. But it isn’t the end, or even the beginning of the end, of the Star. Not by a long shot.
As much as some people – those who give and get “news” in the often perfidious world of talk radio and the blogosphere – would like all to believe, other media haven’t usurped newspapers. Not by a long shot.
We have heard this so many times that some of us are timorously starting to believe it.
But I repeat: It ain’t true.
Indeed, newspaper circulation locally and nationally is declining as fewer people subscribe and fewer buy at newsstands and from machines.
Nationally, daily newspaper circulation fell 2.5 percent in the six months ending in September, reported the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the independent organization that verifies the numbers.
On the other hand, readership of information from newspapers everywhere is rising.
Yes, that’s right: rising. In some cases, meteorically.
That’s both in the numbers of people who read each copy of the newspaper, what we call pass-along readers, and in the numbers who read information provided by newspapers online.
Tucson Citizen online readership has grown at a double-digit percentage pace each of the past eight years. It will do so again this year and next.
Readership and use of news and information that news- papers collect, package and distribute electronically are also up.
In fact, it’s way up, when one considers aggregation sites such as Yahoo and Google. Without content generated by and gleaned from newspapers, those aggregation sites frankly would have nothing to aggregate. They can thank us later.
In Tucson, the combined readership of two daily news- papers, the Citizen and the Star, and the unique visitors of three Web sites – tucsoncitizen.com, azstarnet.com and tucson.com – reach 63.7 percent of adults in the Tucson metro area.
It’s based on an independent survey in which people were asked what newspapers or Web sites they had read the week before.
Ours, was their answer, time and time again.
That ranks us 10th nationally and far outstrips the reach of any other medium – television, radio, other print publications.
Even we sometimes overlook that strength in the day-to-day stressful and tumultuous world in which we live.
So, are newspapers termi- nally ill? No. Not by a long shot.
Reach Michael A. Chihak at 573-4646 or mchihak@tucsoncitizen.com
