News Ltd reveals readership details of newspaper sections

The scepticism alarm comes in that consumers are asked how many minutes they spend.

If you were asked how many minutes you spend reading a paper would you know accurately?

Do you count the whole time the paper’s in front of you on the bus to work? Even if you’re looking out of the window?

Over-reporting a-go-go I suspect.

And then there’s this that I saw just the other day: ‘Winds howl over the deserted moonscape behind Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspaper paywalls’ http://www.boingboing.net/2010.....ugh-t.html

If this is correct, oh dear oh dear. This is at a time when some popular blogs are getting regular readers in the many millions of unique visitors per month, are profitable, and the most popular being valued at well over $100 mill.

Hard to believe this is an accurate reflection of the average newspaper reader.

Given that the poll was essentially conducted by News itself, every bit of information is suss.

*How* were readers asked to participate in the online survey? If the link to the survey was only in the print edition, then the results are bogus.

What about the political cartoon?

What was the age demographic? I hardly see too many 20 year olds spending 42.8 minutes “reading” a broadsheet newspaper every day. No one younger than Rupert was allowed to be involved? That said – 1) If it’s right, it’s good news. And 2) To The Oz’s credit, it has got markedly better in recent times (albeit a little bit too right-wing).

What was the age demographic used? I hardly see too many 20 year olds spending 42.8 minutes “reading” a broadsheet newspaper every day. No one younger than Rupert was allowed to be involved? That said – 1) If it’s right, it’s good news. And 2) To The Oz’s credit, it has got markedly better in recent times (albeit a little bit too right-wing).

Sorry, I have a stutter!

Nice little irony that it took an online survey to produce insights into print readership.

Not sure what its says about the demographic profile of a News Ltd reader though. 62.3 minutes to read the ‘news’ in a Sunday paper? They must be very slow readers!!

Will be a tough spin for the News Ltd people to compare these print paper results – right or wrong – with the shallow engagement on their online news properties.

40-60 mins a day ‘engagement’ with a print version of a paper versus 40-60 seconds a visit ‘engagement’ with the online versions. Can they have their cake and eat it too or will this just move dollars that have incorrectly migrated online back to their rightful print home?

By the way, while these questions have undoubtedly been asked in a way to give the answers they want (or at the very least avoid embarrassing results), this is still additional information that agencies didn;t ahve before.

So well done, anyway.

Now we need an industrywide sectional readership standard. Time for a bit of leadership from Newspaper Works.

Keith, have you been to any suburban / interurban train station at 6/7/8 in the morning. The newsagents do a roaring trade and it’s not just the old folks buying the newpapers, the young ones do as well.

Rupert will only really care when the people that really matter start preferring blogs over hard copy mastheads. For now, they don’t. The audience may be shrinking but the audience that matters is migrating online at a slower rate.

I believe there is Fairfax sectional readership, it was conducted, but never released. It lies somewhere in an abiss at ‘media house’

At least NewsLtd are providing agencies with full transparency of the information

Paul @ 15. I confess, I’m actually a journo. I remember I was out drinking with some Herald mates about five years ago and I made a similar claim (to yours). They were surprised and said “look about next time you’re on a bus or train” and see how many people read a broadsheet – i bet it’ll be none. And you know what, I still do it and I still see none. Everyone’s dicking about on their iphones. But again, if people are (and I’m seriously missing something) that’s great news. Personally, I far prefer to read my news on paper-bark products than lithium crystals.

fair point keith on the broadsheets, but the murdoch tabloid press does alright though!!

Paul, we agree. If people are indeed reading more papers and mags and advertisers want to be in them, then I’m quite certain everyone who visits this site will be happy little campers (as will the coke dealers, for the ad guys!!!!!!) Maybe we’ve become so accustomed to everyone moaning about the industry, selling it short, we’ve forgotten what good news looks like?

First, the most UNSURPISING thing is the cynics that have leapt onto this data with instant assumptions of bias, querying the methodology etc. Tim, thanks for copy/pasting the details that were obviously in the report but you (wisely) didn’t clutter up your post with. I wonder if responses along the lines of … well done News, you listened and you produced … would hurt the cynics.

Second, I am not employed by either News Ltd or Newspoll or any of their business partners or owners, and had nothing to do with this project, but some things seem pretty obvious to me.

You can’t precisely measure the amount of time spent with newspapers, which is why the report says “Average time readers perceive that they spend reading the metro papers”. The reader perceives this. They estimate it in lieu of some chip in their brain or RFID tag embedded in the paper. This methodolgy has been (successfully) used for decades. It is similar to the awareness tracking conducted for creative campaigns and no-one seems to worry too much about that.

But please don’t confuse the precision of the measurement with the accuracy of the result. While each response can be a bit “rubbery” in the main you get sense out of these sorts of questions when you calculate the average of the blocks of data. Think of it like “the wisdom of crowds” – a very popular concept in the online world.

As for the believability of the results, they are FAR more believable than the “monthly uniques” reported for online usage. For example, Australia now has 80+ million Unique Browsers a month – not bad in a country of 22 million people!

And as for the “irony” in using online to measure newspapers, what a silly comment. Online was merely the tool. The sample appears to have been robustly quota sampled from within an online pool, based on what Tim posted. There is as much irony in that as having a research report into online usage delivered in hard-copy format.

Finally, let’s not forget that every week something like over 15 million newspapers are sold – why wouldn’t those people spend 40 or so minutes reading the bloody thing they just spent their hard-earned on?

Fascinating!

We often conduct our own inbred in-house polls and even we can’t fabricate such figures.

“Rupert! That’s a heart!”

Out here in the real world, we can report that the hatred for Rupert’s fascist rubbish is really growing and gaining a greater foothold. Ignore that, as you will, at your peril, “insiders”.

The real world really hates Rupert (and they don’t like you guys that much either).

Regards,

Spring Hill Voice

Megan…get a grip, what real world do you live?

…in

I think it’s funny when you hear people spouting like Megan and their hatred of News Ltd.

They talk about this mighty corporation that they hate and that they dont touch their prodcuts but in reality they probably use News Corp media or companies with out even knowing.

News and Fairfax provide competitive journalism and target different audiences.

Many people who turn their noses up at the Daily Tele because it’s News Ltd will also tell you The Australian is top notch journalism.

Megan is free to choose which is the beauty of the freedom of speech, something which all news organisations will fight for and somethng she should remember.