(Michael P. Smith)

It is finals week here at Northwestern. As we wrap up another academic quarter, let me review three questions I seemed to be getting a lot. They frequently begin with the phrase: What does the research say about...

1. Women readers?
2. Celebrity news?
3. The power of the newspaper brand?

The answer to each topic is not much and, at the same time, a lot. To explain:

Where have all the women gone?
This is not a new issue for newspapers, and it is somewhat curious that it has come up at this time.

The Readership Institute's Impact and New Readers studies focused newspapers' attention on the dramatic decline in readership in the 21- to 25-year-old age group. The largest majority of people in this group were women. You may recall hearing them referred to at one time as soccer moms.

Newspapers do have a track record in trying to reach women readers. In 1972 Time magazine, in an article called Flight from Fluff, documented efforts to attract Baby Boomer women as they began coming of age. Pioneering female newspaper executives - like Scott McGehee and Marty Claus of Knight Ridder and Nancy Woodhull of Gannett and Koky Dishon of Tribune Co. - became experts at helping newspapers focus on the needs of women readers through the 1980s and early 1990s. Before her death, Nancy helped newspapers create special sections for women, as Scott had done in Lexington. Koky created WomaNews at the Chicago Tribune. Their work eventually became the subject of doctoral dissertations. But then came the Internet, and newspapers turned their attention away from this key demographic.

At that time, interesting behaviors were surfacing among readers when the Media Management Center looked at time of day readership. In the early to mid 1990s, the home delivered morning daily was being read later and later in the day. In cities like Charlotte, Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle and Chicago, more than half of the home delivered morning dailies were being read after noon, not at 6 a.m., which had become the national doorstep delivery standard. It is safe to say that anywhere commute times increased in the 1990s, readership by women decreased. The typical later in the day reader was a young working mother who would pick up the newspaper on her way out the door in the morning and stuff it in her bag to read over lunch. (It is also safe to say today that if traffic is a hot local topic, you have a problem with women readers.)

Then came the Internet and things began to change. As more homes and offices became connected, more women weaned themselves from print and began to use their lunch hour for surfing the Web, catching up on news and shopping. The usage charts showed the peak of Internet usage to be at mid-day. This five-year-old chart from the Online Publishers Association is still the picture of usage:



No longer was the young working mother reading her newspaper on her lunch hour, at least not the print version. That holds true today.

The Impact Study gives several clues about the topics of interest for young people and women. It also suggested that those two groups were more susceptible to promotions and refers. I think those two ideas actually give direction for luring women back to print today - create areas on your Web site where they will find the topics of greatest interest to them, and promote those topics in your next day's print edition. Where have the women readers gone? To the Internet. But I could be wrong. Next question.

Should we put Britney on Page One?
The answer is no. Although her obit is your call. Actually, that is never the first question. It is the real question behind the question: What does the Readership Institute research say about celebrity news? The answer is not much.

We could make some generalizations about the research around the concept of entertainment but that would be stretching a bit too much. What we know from other research is that very few people look to their local paper for celebrity news or gossip. Today's readers - especially the younger ones who are presumed to be hooked by gossip - are multiple media users. The hometown daily is the last place they would look for celebrity news or gossip. Many of the calls came in a flurry around news accounts about the strange events in the life of Britney Spears. I confess only marginal knowledge of her (or interest in her life). But even I could not escape knowing a bit about her. The political consultants call this ambient knowledge. Let's hope by putting Spears on its cover this issue Atlantic Monthly has signaled the death of celebrity journalism. There is evidence that it is near.

Celebrity news seldom pops up among the topics of local readership studies. The celebrity television shows are facing ratings issues, and the ratings for awards shows like the Oscars are a shadow of their former selves. While there is a flurry of questions from newspapers about celebrity news in newspapers, the celebrity magazines are in a death plunge.

Even the once-powerful National Enquirer is hurting. According to the latest ABC Fas-Fax reported by Folio Magazine online, the Enquirer's single copy sales were down 15.25 percent (year over year) for the last six months of 2007. This is part of an overall decline in the celebrity/gossip genre.

Said Folio:

...their former dominance has been tainted with continuing weak performances - even if they are still in the top 25. It wasn't so long ago when newsstand trackers were commenting that the celebrity category was almost single-handedly propping up newsstand sales as a whole. People (-8.49%), Star (-4.10%), In Style (-8.59%), and Life & Style Weekly (-9.67%) are all down, while In Touch Weekly (.06%), Us Weekly (2.74%) and OK! (7.13%) showed nominal increases. ...Still, these seven celebrity titles account for about 32 percent of overall single copy sales in the top 25.

All of the trends seem to weigh against the news this week that the Associated Press is adding 21 new staff members to cover celebrity news. The intrepid Nikki Finke reports: "...the wire service claims it's just giving its members what they want 'in an area of growing interest' because it 'makes good business sense'." I am assuming the members AP is trying to please are not their newspaper members. When I shared this news with an editor friend, he said: "In my 25 years as an editor, I've never once suggested to AP that they need to provide us more celebrity news. Is this what our outrageous rate increases are going to pay for? Very disappointing." There's further evidence that AP is thinking beyond daily print newspapers because the guy named in Nikki Finke's report talks about multi-media stories. But I could be wrong. Next question.

Won't our stronger brand translate into more readers?
Not necessarily. There is a lot of evidence that would suggest that brand awareness, brand integrity, brand strength (all different concepts but sometimes used interchangeably) do not guarantee usage or readership. This question usually is part of a conversation about whether the questioner's newspaper should invest more in the journalistic franchise (which I support). It is almost always followed by some sort of downsizing effort. Or an effort to save a specific segment of the newsroom.

But doing more, great journalism does not always translate into attracting more readers. This is always a tough one to wrestle with because my heart is in one place and my head is in another. It is tough to tell well-meaning leaders that, yes, their brand is strong, but it is not relevant enough to the lives of a large number of people (pick the group: young people, women...) in a way that you will turn around readership declines by doing more brand studies.

There are some clear paths from the research on this. The RI experience research specifies some parameters for referring to brand. And there are some roadmaps for creating brand relevance. This is tough work. It takes experimentation, which implies a willingness to fail. It takes time.

Please hold your questions for a week; it is now time for spring break.


By Michael P. Smith (m-smith3@northwestern.edu)
Michael P. Smith is executive director of the Media Management Center.