Who reads newspapers?

Only 35 percent of older adults, 8 per cent of teens, and 16 percent of young adults read the newspaper every day. Newspapers are read hardly ever, or not at all, by 46 percent of teens, 45 percent of young adults and even 33 percent of older adults.

A report from Harvard University, funded by the Knight Foundation and others, examines the amount of daily news consumed by young people. The report is based on a national survey of 1800 randomly sampled teens, young adults, and older adults, The evidence shows that young Americans are estranged from the daily newspaper and rely more heavily on television than on the Internet for their news. A few decades ago, there were not large differences in the news habits and daily information levels of younger and older Americans. Today, unlike most older Americans, many young people find a bit of news here and there and do not make it a routine part of their day.

See a New York Times story on the report.

Click here to see a table from the report on readership.

Click on the headline to see the report in a PDF file from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

The research was funded by a generous grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, for the consideration of the Carnegie-Knight Task Force on the Future of Journalism Education. The Carnegie-Knight Initiative was launched in 2005 and focuses on curriculum reform at graduate schools of journalism, an innovative student internship program called News21, research, and creating a platform for educators to speak on journalism policy and education issues. All of these efforts grew out of a partnership
involving the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and participating universities.

The cartoon, posted earlier on this blog, comes via of retiree Calvin Deshong.