Study: 22% of Internet users abandon newspapers

Posted by Simon Day on April 30, 2009 at 5:39 AM

A study by University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication found that 22 percent of Internet users have cancelled their newspaper subscriptions now that they can find the same content online, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

However, the study also found that newspapers would be missed. Sixty-one percent of Internet users who also read newspapers in print would rue the disappearance of the print publication. This is a 56 percent increase from a year earlier.

Earlier this week the Audit Bureau of Circulations released figures that showed an average sales decline of 7.1 percent for the sixth month period ending March 31. The authors of the Annenberg survey suggest that their results show that this decline will be a permanent trend, the AP reported.

Jeffery Cole, head of the Annenberg School's Center for a Digital Future, 10 years ago predicted a long and prosperous future for print newspapers. He now accepts this hypothesis as optimistic, according to the AP. He further predicted that print newspapers would be a thing of the past within the next few years, citing the acceleration of the advertising decline by the economic climate as the catalyst for the death of the print format.

The survey, conducted from April 9 to June 30, 2008, had a sample size of 2,030 people aged 12 and over, with a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percent.