Print newspapers still get 97% of readership

That statistic — 97% of newspaper readership happens in print, with only 3% happening online — comes from a new report from the Nieman Journalism Lab. That’s a project of Harvard University. See more in their blog post, “Print is still king.”

Those numbers go against the conventional wisdom, particularly among Web-centric techie bloggers — especially when you consider the reality that many urban newspapers are in trouble.

IMHO, the decline in newspaper print readership isn’t caused only (or primarily) by a lack of interest in the product by subscribers. It’s caused by a decline in the quantity of advertising placed in the print newspapers.

The price you pay for an “ink on dead trees” newspaper or magazine, whether at a newsstand or in a home subscription, barely covers the price of smearing that ink onto those dead trees and getting it into your hands. (That’s what we in the publishing trade call “make and deliver.”) The other costs of producing that newspaper are carried entirely by advertising. Fewer ads, fewer newspaper pages, and ultimately, fewer newspapers.

The Web has destroyed the “make and deliver” equation. Pixels on LCDs are much cheaper than ink on dead trees. Web servers are cheaper than printing presses. T-1 lines are cheaper than delivery trucks. That part of the newspaper food chain has been revolutionized by the Web, and everyone wins. Newspaper publishers love the Web because it lowers those costs.

Of course, the Web has not eliminated the costs of content creation and production. The substantial expenses of running bureaus, and employing professional photographers, writers and editors, are unchanged by the Web. Web-centric newspaper publishers much to find revenue streams to cover those expensive: banner ads, paid subscriptions, etc.

Finding that revenue has proven challenging. That’s affected the quality of a lot of online journalism’s content, with the result in the decline in professional journalism and the rise of citizen journalism.

It is not clear to me, from my catbird seat at SD Times, that all subscribers prefer reading newspapers on the Web. It’s not even clear that a lot of them do. Demand for the print edition of SD Times is consistently high. Yes, a lot of readers go to our Web site, or read SD Times on RSS, or get it pushed out as a PDF. But yes, a lot of our subscribers prefer print. And that’s for a publication for the software industry!

Is print still king? Nieman’s numbers notwithstanding, I honestly don’t know. But I do believe many (or most) readers still want their newspapers in print.