Reader numbers rare good news for papers
TORONTO — Despite the persistent doom and gloom that plagues the newspaper industry, a research group insists readership numbers really aren’t that bad in Canada.
According to surveys conducted by NADbank (the Newspaper Audience Databank), nearly 80 per cent of Canadians said they pick up a physical newspaper or visit a paper’s website at least once a week and almost half do so daily.
Anne Crassweller, president of NADbank, concedes newspaper readership is down; while the numbers are up a bit they’re not keeping up with population growth.
Still, the figures suggest Canadian readers aren’t losing interest in the work newspapers do, she said.
“The reason print does so well in Canada unlike other countries — because that’s where all the rhetoric comes from, in the U.S. they have huge problems down there — it’s because the free dailies have been so successful here at entrenching themselves into the marketplace, they have a solid base of readership,” she said.
“Research has shown, for a number of years, that people actually are reading newspapers but the news in the media is that they’re not.”
People are also surprised to learn that print newspapers are still read more than papers’ websites, Crassweller added.
“Of all the people that read newspaper (articles) every week 57 per cent of them only read a printed newspaper. They don’t read a digital copy — people are just blown away by that,” she said.