2. Who's Reading What?
Themes
In the State of the News Print Media in Australia 2006 and in the 2007 Supplement, there were detailed chapters on historical and current circulation and readership. In this report Inez Ryan has updated these data.
The most recent data underline particularly increased use of online news sites and astonishingly increased rates of access.
The data indicate that newspaper circulation in Australia, when compared to the US and the UK, for example, is reasonably stable. In fact, "quality" press (broadsheet) circulations have risen slightly, while tabloids have generally suffered a slight decline. There has been a greater decline in the circulation of Sunday newspapers, for reasons yet to be adequately explored.
Care must be taken when comparing current figures with 2006 and earlier as there were significant changes in 2007 in the methods used by the Audit Bureau of Circulation in assessing the number of newspapers sold, in the interest of greater accuracy.
Questions about the adequacy of readership figures were raised in the two earlier editions of this report and they remain valid. Nonetheless the readership figures are presented here as a guide on the trends in this area. Even if there are methodological concerns, the methods for gathering the data remain the same year–to–year and the comparisons should be valid.
In a crikey.com.au article on May 26 Margaret Simons questioned, "Are Nielsen Net Ratings bunkum?" Again, there are good reasons to question the methodology used for these figures - assessing the popularity of online news sites by means of "unique browsers" visiting the sites - but we have very few other data that can claim to be any more accurate as reflections of internet usage.
One question that remains unanswered is: do visits to newspaper websites indicate additional readers, so that the total is taken to indicate a greater level of "circulation"? Or are those accessing newspaper websites supplementing their print experience by following stories through the day? The Audit Bureau of Circulations is looking at ways of including website visits as a part of its circulation audit. If it were to do so, and it was able to separate repeat visits from those accessing the online version only, we might have better data for future reports.