PressEthic

Reuters reports for Wired that more people are getting information from the websites of newspapers, while the print readership is declining. This phenomenon, which has spurred wide speculation and discussion in journalism circles, is documented by a new study by the Newspaper Association of America, the country's largest newspaper trade association. According to the study, the average number of visitors to newspaper websites each month in the first half of 2006 was 55.5 million, compared with 42.2 million per month last year. Wired presents the NAA's findings without much background information on the changing trends of newspaper readership, saying only this:

Newspaper publishers have been fighting to hold on to advertisers as many of them lose readers to other media, including the Internet.

Key to the latest report is the finding that websites are bringing in more younger readers, the association said.

A similar story in Editor & Publisher provides more industry-relevant context, justifying the shift.

The data bears out that younger people are not ditching the paper -- they are reading it online. Newspaper Web sites contributed a 15% increase in total audience for adults 25 to 34 and a 10% increase in adults 18 to 24.

"We are already seeing the positive impact of publishers' innovations and strategies to broaden the audience online," said John Sturm, president and CEO of the NAA, during a conference call this morning.

This seems to confirm what we have all heard about online readership, including the idea that the internet has not led people to consider news from vastly broader sources, but rather that people are consulting the same sources they used to read in print, only now they are reading it off their computer screens.