Study Shows Readership at Crossroads

By: Mark Fitzgerald In their coverage of the Iraq conflict, newspapers may have won the quality battle but lost the war -- for young or uncommitted readers. According to the latest study by the Readership Institute (RI), highlighted at the Newspaper Association of America convention, readership by "light" and young readers did increase modestly during the recent invasion -- but that actually may hurt in the long run. These infrequent readers poked into newspapers more, but didn't like what they saw.

"One thing that is clear is that even as light and young readers moved to the paper, they were not satisfied, compared to the levels of heavy and moderate readers," said RI Director John Lavine. "They will not stick with you."

Still, a separate RI study showed that because many newspapers are using the techniques suggested by the institute's mammoth "Impact" study -- publishing more in-paper content promotions, telling stories about ordinary people, improving circulation service, and shedding a "defensive" corporate culture - newspapers are making some progress on readership.

Overall, problems remain with light and young readers, "but readership of your heaviest readers went up," Lavine, who also directs the Media Management Center at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., told publishers at the NAA convention. "You're making real headway with moderate and heavy readers." Further, the study shows that one-third of young readers are already heavy readers, a result that is far below that of past generations but unexpectedly high now, given the long decline of newspaper readership.

What newspapers must do to attract younger and infrequent readers is rebrand their products the way the Starbucks Corp. transformed the image of coffee, Lavine said: "Coffee in a can is a dead ringer for where newspapers were: It was a mature product, it was dying, everybody said its time was over -- and then Starbucks came along."

Young readers tell RI researchers they feel they are "drowning" in a typical newspaper's long, complex content. What they should be feeling is "buzz" with features and storytelling techniques that encourage discussion. "Of all kinds of marketing, nothing is better than someone saying to their friend, 'Did you see this in the paper?'" Lavine said.

The results of the institute's most recent study, however, were pretty grim. For all the "embedding," the elegant news packaging, and the ready-made desert drama, newspaper coverage of the war in Iraq failed to move the needle on readership. People who were already "moderate" or "heavy" readers of newspapers before the war did not pick up a paper more frequently, spend more time reading it, or read more of the paper during the war -- the three factors that make up the RBS, or Reader Behavior Score.

Overall, in fact, TV won the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers during the Iraq war, the study of 1,550 people in 100 markets found. "By a large margin, TV won in Iraq -- even in areas that papers expected to win," Lavine said. Study participants used superlatives to describe the performance of TV news that were once reserved only for newspapers: TV news was rated as the medium that was most complete, accurate, and engaging -- and participants indicated they thought it offered the best experts and greatest variety of viewpoints.

Preliminary results of the Iraq war study are posted on RI's Web site (http://www.readership.org). For E&P Editor Greg Mitchell's take on it, read his May 1 column.