Monday, August 20, 2007

PD places second in readership poll

The Cleveland Plain Dealer posted the second highest readership for Sundays and third highest daily among newspapers in the country's 50 biggest metro areas, a new report shows.

The Sunday edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ranked first for the fourth consecutive year in a Scarborough Research survey that looks at how many adults in ma jor
U.S. metropolitan center read their local newspapers.

The survey found that among 1,136,449 adults in the four-county Milwaukee area, on average 798,052, or 70.2%, read the Sunday edition of the Journal Sentinel. That is up from 69.7% last year. The Cleveland Plain Dealer posted the second-highest market penetration, at 61.3%.

Gary Meo, Scarborough's senior vice president for print and Internet sales, said newspapers with the highest penetration rates tend to be in markets that have some or all of these characteristics: colder climates, a well-educated population, an older population and little newspaper competition.

"My personal opinion is that certain newspapers are very good at covering their communities, and there is something about the culture perhaps that's interested in local news and local information and the newspaper just does the best job of doing that in a particular market,." Meo said.

The market penetration report measures how many people read the newspaper, not how many buy it. It includes people who, for instance, will pass the newspaper along to someone else in their household.

Percentage of adults who read Sunday editions
1. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 70.2%
2. Cleveland Plain Dealer: 61.3%
3. Newsday: 59.2%
4. Columbus Dispatch: 57.5%
5. San Antonio Express-News: 57.4%
6. Orlando Sentinel: 57.1%
7. Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News: 56.6%
8. Indianapolis Star: 56.2%
9. Washington Post: 53.2%
10. Kansas City Star: 52.9%

Percentage of adults who read daily editions:
1. Newsday: 50.1%
2. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 46.5%
3. Cleveland Plain Dealer: 43.2%
4. San Jose Mercury News: 41.6%
5. Portland Oregonian: 41.5%
6. Indianapolis Star: 39.5%
7. Florida Times-Union: 39.1%
8. Washington Post: 38.9%
9. Kansas City Star: 37.1%
10. San Francisco Chronicle: 36.8%

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