A new newspaper industry association report on Canadian readership has been released — although not fully; details in a bit — and the best the president can do to explain what they mean is:
Newspapers are continuing to hold their own in Canada’s increasingly fragmented media environment, Anne Kothawala, President and CEO of the Canadian Newspaper Association said today in a statement responding to the release by NADbank (Newspaper Audience Data Bank) of readership data in four Canadian markets.
~snip~
“The story the numbers don’t tell, but that needs to be underscored, is who our readers are, and how are they reading the newspaper,” she continued.
“Newspaper readers are an important demographic group with higher levels of disposable income. They crave information, whether editorial, news, or advertising. They talk about what they read and see, and influence their friends and family. In assessing the continuing vitality of newspapers, we must also measure the quality of our readership and their level of engagement,” she said.
All of that may be true (there’s actually no accompanying data on the “higher levels of disposable income,” for instance.) But the numbers that have been released can’t be that comforting for newspaper owners.
For instance, there’s a chart that shows that in the top 17 markets in the country, which aren’t defined, there’s been a slight increase in newspaper readership (not circulation; this is based on polling). Between 2002 and 207, readership grew 1.9 per cent. Because the top 17 markets aren’t identified, I can’t directly match readership and population, but, in the same period, Canada’s population grew 4.2 per cent.
And it doesn’t say if that readership includes the free dailies, which the report points out are growing.
More worrying, I would think, are the readership numbers for the top five markets in Canada with populations of more than 150,000. None of Canada’s major cities show up on the list. At the top of the list is Windsor, Ontario, which has the highest percentage of residents who read a newspaper the previous day, at 60 per cent. Rounding out the top five is Winnipeg, Manitoba at 56%. Newspaper readership in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver and other million-people-plus urban areas is apparently lower than 56%.
(Of course it may be higher. Given the paucity of the numbers actually released, it’s hard to tell.)
These are the numbers we get. Only members of NADbank, the research arm of the newspaper association, will get the full report. If there are good numbers in there, I’ll presume local newspapers will do some reportin’ on them. I’ll keep an eye out for them, to see if “holding our own” is a dead accurate assessment or a bit of a bandage over a continually seeping wound.
SOURCE: THE CANADIAN JOURNALISM PROJECT | TAGS: NEWSPAPERS, READERSHIP, CANADA
