Newspaper Audience - 2006 Annual Report

There has been debate in the industry for years about which is the better measure of audience reach, paid circulation or readership. The NAA, and some companies like Tribune, have long touted readership as the superior measure of how many eyeballs look at ads in each day’s paper.

The let’s-talk-about-readership argument reached a crescendo in 2005. Jay Smith, president of Cox newspapers and chairman of the NAA, distributed an op-ed, timed to coincide with the release of the September 2005 circulation results. He wrote that circulation is a “flawed measure of the true vibrant audience newspapers attract,” comparable to counting the number of TV sets rather than TV viewers.16

Including households where several adults read the paper, “pass along,” and copies read in public places by several people, a typical newspaper increases its circulation total by a factor of 2.3 daily and 2.6 Sunday, according to the NAA.17 By that measure 77% of adults read a paper at least once a week (a positive spin on declining seven-day-a-week readership).18

But as Editor & Publisher reported, there is a question whether advertisers find the argument persuasive. They have been paying very high rates for years in part because of the commitment implied by a reader’s decision to pay for the newspaper but also with knowledge that the real reach is greater . So advertisers may see the emphasis on readership numbers mostly as a sign of eroding commitment.19