Poll: As newspaper circulation dwindles most won't pay to read online

Charging for online subscriptions probably won’t improve the struggling fortunes for the newspaper industry.

According to a recent Harris survey sampling 2,136 adults online late last year 77% said they would refuse to pay anything for access to a newspaper’s stories on the web. Less than two in ten (19%) would be willing to pay between $1 and $10 a month in readership fees with less than five-percent willing to pay more than $10 per-month for the online service. Those living in the western United States (29%) were most likely to pay for newspaper stories online. In the East that total is just 19%.

Struggling to convince their readers to subscribe online for a fee is a reflection of an overall drop in readership since the early 1980s. The Newspaper Association of America website tracks several figures including newspapers in print and average circulation since 1940. That year there were a record total of 1,878 newspapers in operation. With the U.S. population at little over 130-million the ratio was around one paper for every 70,000 citizens. Furthermore daily circulation totals averaged 41,132. While that’s low even by today’s standards it does indicate that nearly 60% of the population purchased and read newspapers on a daily basis in 1940.

The peak year for circulation came in 1984 when an average of 63,340 Americans purchased newspapers daily. With the population of the United States at around 235-million, or around 24% smaller than today, over 45% of Americans bought papers each day. As of 2008 however newspapers in publication (1,408) had reached their lowest level on record. The average circulation of 48,597 represents the first time newspapers have dropped below the 50,000 mark since 1945. Just over 22% of the total public now pays for their daily news in print (including less than half of adults), half of what it was a quarter-century ago and nearly one-third of its peak total in the early-40s.

In an interesting albeit inevitable twist most newspaper publications have now been forced to court the internet – the same information medium that was the biggest factor in the industry’s decline – in an attempt to generate greater profits and reach more readers. Losing readership is the greatest threat to the life of any newspaper, but concern over the costs to print continues to increase while advertising revenue shrinks. Circulation expenditures reached over $10 billion for the first time in 1997 and have not come close to falling back under that total in the ensuing years.

Back to the Harris survey, just 43% of those surveyed say they read the newspaper each day in either its print or online format. Ten-percent claim they never read a newspaper meanwhile, 72% say they do so once a week and 81% once per-month. Setting a dangerous precedent for the future of the industry fewer people read the newspaper by descending age group. Not surprisingly elders 55+ are the most loyal group of readers with 64% claiming to flip through their paper almost every day. That percentage drops to 44% in the 45-54 year old age group, 36% in the 35-44 age grouping and 23% amongst younger adults aged 18-34.

If the newspaper industry wants to survive collectively in the coming decades it will likely need to convince many young readers to begin picking up their paper more often as they grow older. Charging for online subscriptions or to view individual articles appears to be a difficult undertaking at this point in time. Meanwhile newspapers continue the laborious dig for dollars and advertisers faced with a struggling economy and dwindling readership.