Report: Newspapers Still Matter

A Nielsen Scarborough study measured U.S. newspaper readership and found that more than 169 million adults read a newspaper in print, on a Web site or on a mobile app in a month in 2016.

In total, newspapers reach 69% of the U.S. population each month.

According to the study, 81% of monthly newspaper readers engage with a print product. Some 51% read print exclusively.

MediaPost reports the remaining 49% reads a newspaper on at least one digital platform, with 30% reading both digital and print.

Only 5% gets their news from a Web site exclusively.

Traditionally, newspaper audiences tend to be more educated, affluent and older than non-newspaper readers, according to Nielsen. While the first two traits continue to be true, the expansion of digital media has attracted younger readers. As a result, the ages of newspaper readers more closely reflect the general population.

For example, millennials make up 25% of the U.S. population and now represent 24% of the total monthly newspaper readership.

However, newspaper readers on any platform are still more likely to be college graduates and have annual household incomes over $100,000 than non-readers. Digital newspaper paper readers are 49% more likely than the general adult population to be a college graduate and 43% more likely to have household incomes over $100,000.

Most digital newspaper readers are millennials, at 32% of the population. Print newspaper readers tend to be part of the baby-boomer generation, at 37% of the population.