NRS: New readers provide a future for newspapers in print

Katherine Page, technical consultant for the National Readership Survey, explains how British quality newspapers have shown a remarkable ability to evolve and fulfil their unique role in the media landscape…

Contrary to popular belief, the number of adults who ever read a quality daily or Sunday newspaper has actually been increasing since 2001. What’s more, this increase isn’t restricted to older readers: 15 to 24-year-olds are reading more, too.

Let’s be clear: many of the new readers are occasional rather than regular readers, and they don’t always buy their own copy – but they are new readers nevertheless.

A favourite topic of media commentators is whether newspapers have a future in print. It is hardly surprising each new batch of circulation figures confirms the underlying trend in newspaper sales. There’s no doubt there is a movement away from a ‘buy my own newspaper every day’ habit and, in particular, home delivery.

However, readership and circulation are not the same thing. The National Readership Survey’s large continuous sample of 36,000 in-home interviews per year can be used to track long-term changes in readership, as well as the period-on-period changes used for trading and planning.

NRS trends over the last ten years show that the nature of newspaper readership is certainly changing, but not always in a negative way when it comes to the quality press.

Compared to 2001, the level of average issue readership (that’s the number of adults who read a quality daily newspaper yesterday or a quality Sunday in the last seven days) has been much more resilient than might be supposed, with little change to readership levels for most titles. Furthermore, the gross number of claims to have read a quality newspaper in the past year has increased by 18% since 2001, largely as a result of new occasional readers.

It’s a fair question whether this increase might reflect some confusion on the part of the respondents completing the NRS survey. Have they in fact read the news online, but claim the print version by mistake? We don’t believe so. NRS has run tests to check for confusion when respondents claim average issue readership of a print publication, and found very little evidence of confusion with online newspapers.

Even better news for the quality press is that gross number of claims to have read in the past year has also risen among 15 to 24 year-olds, by 15%. NRS research also shows that people with heavy internet usage are in fact above-average consumers of print – they certainly read online, but that doesn’t stop them reading print as well.

So why is the pool of readers increasing for the quality press? It has been a decade of innovation which has seen, among other developments, the launch of compact editions, new techniques to get newspapers into readers’ hands, and a news agenda which is much more reader-centric than ten years ago.

It’s also possible that the internet has generated some new readers. By providing the opportunity to sample and share content, the internet may be stimulating consumption of news and, perhaps most important, comment, along with the impulse to pick up a quality newspaper, even if occasionally rather than every day. Indeed, the NRS trends indicate that quality readers have expanded their repertoire of titles.

Whatever the reasons, during the last 50 years British quality newspapers have shown a remarkable ability to evolve and fulfil their unique role in the media landscape. The pace of change may have speeded up in the last decade, but the readership trends suggest the evolution is by no means over.

News International’s Dominic Carter, GNM’s Andrew Freeman and an expert panel will discuss business models, the value of content, distribution opportunities and much more at MediaTel Group’s latest Future of National Newspapers seminar on 1st October. Click here for more information or to book your ticket!