More than 90% of newspaper reading still in print, research shows

Analysing trends over a four year period, the study, by Dr Neil Thurman from City's Journalism Department, shows that only one newspaper -- The Guardian -- saw an increase in the total time its domestic readers spent with the brand in print and online. Across the 12 titles, combined print and online reading time fell by an average of more than 4% per year.

Published in the journal Digital Journalism, the study is one of the most comprehensive of its kind and demonstrates the enduring importance of newspapers' print editions in capturing and holding their readers' attention.

One of the study's more surprising findings is that for most newspapers their overseas audience still spends more time with the printed paper than with the online edition.

"Although the overseas audience does account for a significant proportion of newspapers' online reading time, they have not off-set the attention lost from dwindling domestic print sales" said Dr Thurman.

The study's main online reading data did not track readers' consumption of smartphone and tablet 'apps', but the browsing of their regular websites via mobile devices was included.

"There has been very little information the consumption of newspapers' 'app' editions. The best we can do is estimate that 'apps' boost newspapers' online reading time by between 20-25%.

"Unfortunately, for most newspapers, such a boost from mobile platforms has not countered losses in reading time due to falling print circulations" said Dr Thurman.

Even with 'apps' factored in, the study concludes that more than 90% of newspaper reading time still comes from print. "Newspapers still get over 85% of their advertising revenues from print. Give that 'time is money', we shouldn't be very surprised that a similar amount of the temporal attention newspapers receive is also from print" said Dr Thurman.