Editorial - Look who's alive and well - you're holding it

"Editorial - Look who's alive and well - you're holding it," ECHO PRESS, Dec. 9, 2009.

Here’s good news about community newspapers: They’re still being voraciously read, widely discussed and shared throughout their readership area. They’re also clearly the most dominant source of information that local residents turn to for local news.

This drowns out the “death knells” some have been trying to sound about newspapers in the last couple of years.

Community newspapers are generally described as those with a circulation of 15,000 or less, such as the Echo Press.

Here’s the latest data released by the research arm of the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism:

•81 percent of those surveyed read a local newspaper each week – that’s more than 86 million Americans.

•Those readers, on average, share their paper with 2.36 additional readers.

•Community newspaper readers spend about 40 minutes with their paper.

•Seventy-three percent of readers read most or all of their community newspaper.

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For more data on community newspapers and the data used in this article, click here.