Shockingly, people still reading newspapers

NADbank, the national newspaper readership monitoring service, released a report on Wednesday with some new numbers (PDF) for newspaper publishers to chew on. And, of course, with all the data there, each newspaper cherry-picks facts to make it look like they’re doing better than their competitors:

So what do the numbers show?

For the sake of comparison, I’m using the “five-day cumulative” number, which measures how many people read the newspaper (in printed form) at least once over the previous five weekdays. The numbers are compared to the last annual report released in March.

  • Journal de Montréal: 1,027,400, up 3.3% from 994,600 despite the lockout
  • La Presse: 678,200, up 0.9% from 672,300
  • Metro: 630,100, up 2.0% from 617,900
  • The Gazette: 454,200, down 1.1% from 459,200
  • 24 Heures: 516,400, up 13.9% from 453,200

Note that no numbers are given for Le Devoir.

The big news here is with 24 Heures, which has shown a huge jump in readership, surpassing The Gazette for fourth place in the market overall.  This is most likely due to more aggressive distribution as well as the increased number of journalists now employed by the paper since the Journal de Montréal was locked out. It also may have picked up some former ICI readers, since ICI is now a weekly supplement in 24 Heures.

For online readership, the numbers are all press-release-worthy:

  • La Presse (cyberpresse.ca): 359,000, up 10% from 326,200
  • The Gazette (montrealgazette.com): 134,900, up 6.5% from 126,700
  • Metro (journalmetro.com): 36,900, up 12.2% from 32,900
  • 24 Heures (24hmontreal.canoe.ca): 27,100, up 24.3% from 21,800

NADbank is also, for the first time, counting Journal de Montréal online readership (the Journal doesn’t have its own website, but Canoe groups some of its articles on a page here). It measures weekly readership at a paltry 130,700, just a bit less than The Gazette.

It’s unsurprising that online has grown quite a bit (in most cases it really has nowhere to go but up), and while Metro and 24 Heures have seen huge gains percentagewise, their numbers are still so small that NADbank puts an asterisk next to them to indicate the sample size was too small to be reliable.

Speaking of small sample sizes, the numbers also include Montreal readership for the Globe and Mail (97.600 Monday-Friday, 79,800 weekly online) and National Post (71,400 Monday-Friday, 41,100 weekly online).

So I guess the newspaper crisis is over, huh?

13 thoughts on “Shockingly, people still reading newspapers

    1. Guy Billard

      La Presse announces that in february it will offer an integral version for $2.00 per month to their customers who are presently subscribed, no matter where they are, wich will be sent to their computer.

      Reply
      1. Fagstein Post author

        In other words, they’re asking subscribers to pay again for something they’ve already paid for.

        Most newspapers (including The Gazette) offer the electronic version for free to paid subscribers.

        Reply
  1. dewolf

    I’ve noticed that Metro seems to be running far more original content than a couple of years ago. Do you think this is a result of the Journal lockout, or is Metro doing this in other markets as well?

    Reply
    1. Fagstein Post author

      The addition of original content began long before the lockout. It has more to do with the newspaper getting older and hiring actual journalists, who are needed especially to cover local news and entertainment.

      The fact that it’s competing against 24 Heures, which also hired a bunch of journalists recently to fill the void left by the Journal, can’t be ignored either.

      Reply
  2. Pingback: Shockingly, people still reading newspapers « Histoires de geek!

  3. Jean Naimard

    Does the numbers include the copies who are not picked-up by people? And for Zie Gazette (daß Montrealrhödesische Zeitung), does that include the copies that are routinely given away all over the place (boy,this must piss-off regular subscribers!!!)????

    Reply
    1. Fagstein Post author

      The numbers are for people who have read the newspaper. So if it wasn’t picked up, it wasn’t read.

      That also means it includes freebies (otherwise Metro and 24 Heures would be zero), which is the big reason why the Journal seems to be doing so well despite a crippling lockout.

      Reply
  4. David Pinto

    Nice of Jean Naimard to use German diacritical marks in his post. (daß Montrealrhödesische Zeitung) Is this supposed to make his sneering at us Anglos easier to accept?

    Reply
    1. Jean Naimard

      LOL! Happens most of the time in front of Lionel-Groulx…

      This is doubtless a ploy to increase circulation in order to keep ad rates up…

      If I’d have been suckered into buying a Gazoo subscription (or picked one at the dépanneur), I’d be pissed to be offered a free one as I step down from the 211…

      Reply

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