Who Is Reading: A Question of Demographics | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)

March 13, 2006

To get a deeper understanding of overall readership patterns, it may be helpful to look at the similarities and differences among various demographic groups.

These three observations stood out in 2005:

1. First, readership continued to decline among almost every demographic group.

2. Second, newspaper readership among Hispanics remains well behind that of other racial and ethnic groups; and

3. Third, readership among Americans with graduate degrees continued to decline in 2005 after significant increases earlier in the decade.

Age Groups and Readership

We have reported in earlier editions of the annual report that while older Americans are more likely than younger ones to be newspaper readers, people of every age group are reading them less often each year. That trend apparently continued in 2005.

In 2005, daily and Sunday readership generally fell a percentage point or two for each age bracket. Indeed, there has been a consistent and slow decline on that order since the late 1990s.23

According to Scarborough Research, a consumer marketing company, 38% of people aged 18 to 24 read a newspaper during the week and 46% did so on Sundays. Fewer people in the next age bracket, 25 to 34, were weekday readers (37%) and they were only slightly more likely to be Sunday readers (47%).24

We also looked at older readers. Americans 34 and older generally came of age at a time before the emergence of the Web as a mass information tool. Moreover, they are usually more likely to have higher incomes to spend on a newspaper subscription. But they too seemed to have abandoned the newspaper — at least in its print form — and at the same rate as younger Americans, in 2005.25

None of this is to minimize the generational dilemma newspapers face. As some of their loyal older readers are literally dying off, the youngest adults look first to the Internet for news. In a study for the Carnegie and Knight foundations, Merrill Brown found that baby boomers read newspapers a third less than their parents and Gen Xers another third less than the boomers.26

Daily Newspaper Readership by Age Group

Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Scarborough Research survey data

Sunday Newspaper Readership by Age Group

Percentage reading newspapers on an average Sunday, 1999-2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Scarborough Research survey data

Race, Ethnicity and Readership

A recent study shows that around a quarter of the adult U.S. population now consumes some form of ethnic media. Hispanic newspaper readership, however, remains lower than that of non-Hispanic whites, though it should be noted that newspaper readership in 2005 declined among all racial and ethnic groups.

Newspaper readership both during the week and on Sundays was slightly higher among whites than other racial and ethnic groups. According to Scarborough Research, readership was particularly low for Hispanics. Around a third of Hispanic adults said they read newspapers.

Daily Newspaper Readership by Race/Ethnicity

Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Scarborough Research survey data

Sunday Newspaper Readership by Race/Ethnicity

Percentage reading newspapers on an average Sunday, 1999-2005

Design Your Own Chart

Source: Scarborough Research survey data

Education and Readership

Historically, newspaper readership increases with education. While that remained true in 2005, every education level experienced declines, even the most educated.

For several years, Americans with postgraduate degrees had reversed the overall trend of declining readership. Indeed, readership in that group rose nearly 10 points between 2002 and 2003. But it started falling in 2004.