Phil Meyer comment on Asheville news

This comment on the Ashville Asheville (NC) Citizen-Times artlcle below Philip Meyer, the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hil and Washington correspondent of the Beacon Journal 1962-1966::

Wow! Seventy-four percent readership sounds really impressive. It hasn't been that high nationally since 1971. But if you look closely, you will find they have switched the metric on us. Scarborough now provides cumulative weekly readership in place of the old "read
yesterday" or average daily readership. In other words, Asheville might be saying that 74 percent of adults in some closely defined market area read the paper at least once in a typical week. But even that is suspiciously high.

Scarborough Research is showing only 44 percent weekly print audience for the Charlotte Observer and 36 percent for the News & Observer in their respective metro areas. (The N&O has to compete with the Durham Herald-Sun.) The current report treats the entire Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville/Anderson area as one market, and the Asheville paper gets only 17 percent weekly coverage there.

http://images.mediapost.com/pdf/NewspaperRatings2008.pdf

However you look at it, consolidating printing facilities is a good idea.

Phil