For three newspapers in the Athens and Atlanta area, there has been an increase in readership online but not necessarily because readers prefer to read the news online and want to stop reading the print version.
In the past year, several newspapers, including the Christian Science Monitor, have announced their move from print to online publication.
According to the State of the News Media website, in 2006, circulation was falling at about 2.5% year-to-year for dailies and 3.3% for Sunday editions.
As newspapers fall upon tough times and technology increases, society seems to want to get their news from the Internet.
However, print readership for the Atlanta Journal Constitution reached 45.5% of Atlanta while online readership reached only 17.5% of Atlanta, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution is not letting the seeming transition from print media to online media lure them into the online world.
“For the past few years, we’ve given up the idea of gaining readership and have been trying to hold on to readers we have,” Sunday editor Charles Gay said.
To keep the readers happy, the AJC held extensive focus groups asking the readers what they wanted from their paper. Many readers responded saying they wanted more of an old-style newspaper with lots of stories on the front pages and small photos.
In early 2009, the AJC began a new marketing campaign for the Sunday paper. The new campaign emphasizes the Sunday paper as a distinct paper from the daily AJC and promotes reading the paper in print.
The Sunday paper also differs from the daily paper in the fact that hardly any of the Sunday paper content goes online in an effort to encourage readers to buy the paper.
Even the slogan of the campaign, “Unplug. It’s Sunday,” takes the focus away from online media and shifts the focus back to print.
“[With the new marketing campaign and suggestions from the readers], we’ve seen a surprising and gratifying up pick in single copy circulation,” Gay said.
The Athens Banner Herald puts content from the print version online but remains mostly unconcerned about the declining print readership.
“I think [readership is] more effected right now because of the economic downturn rather than people switching from print to online, if they weren’t reading online before,” Linda Howard said about readership in Athens. “There is a decline in circulation and readership because of the demographic area.”
Howard is the director of circulation and marketing strategies for the Banner Herald.
Though Howard says print readership is declining because people cannot afford to buy the paper and not because people are switching to online media because of the Internet’s popularity, the audience numbers online are still growing tremendously.
The Banner Herald is using several strategies to make the online version stronger such as updating news throughout the day and putting Gameday information online on Fridays instead of waiting for Saturday.
Despite the efforts to gain readership online, Howard remains confident in the print version.
“We’re still promoting the print product and it’s as strong as it can be right now,” Howard said.
Even the Red & Black remains unconcerned about print readership and has not noticed a significant decrease in print readership.
“We are a bit different because we are a free paper,” Red & Black managing editor Hayley Peterson said. “But we have noticed a decline in advertising.”
The only revenue the Red & Black receives is from advertisers.
Editor in chief Carolyn Christ said the content and headlines determine if a reader picks up a paper each day.
“[Readership] depends sometimes on the news of the day and if the headlines are big and catchy,” Christ said. “We try to make the headlines better.”
Christ also said there has been an increase in online readership.
There is a large amount of online readership, especially from people living outside of Athens, such as alumni.
“We’re trying to supply things in the online version that we can’t for the print version,” Peterson said.
Interactive elements that have been added to attract more readers include blogs, multimedia, police documents and other supplements to articles.
Newspapers are focusing on making their online content better but as indicated by these three news publications, readers seem to still be enjoying the print version.
Becky Atkinson’s article was a well written and interesting article. I did have a few things that I suggested to her. I felt that her story jumped around a little bit and did not have as much flow as I would have like. Also she needed to work on her beginning to prepare the reader and tell the reader what she was about to tell them about. Other than that there were just a few style errors or grammatical errors. My suggestion for another source was just to find another person in the news industry that could shed more light on her subject to make the story clearer.
ReplyDeleteI learned a lot from the editing experience about Becky. I learned that this was not her first news story. She has actually been writing her whole college career. She helped me a lot with my style and stories because I am new to this and she is not. I also learned that Becky is a confident writer and takes a lot of notes and uses a good bit of them. Overall it was a very good learning experience.