News update: NRS - Print still in favour with today’s tech generation (June 2011)

I found this article while searching online for audience profiling information and found it fascinating.

http://www.nrs.co.uk/news.html

Currently the latest news story on what is presumably a badly maintained National Readership Survey website from June 2011, Katherine Page reports that people have not given up on print productions such as newspapers and magazines, even though material that could be found inside these productions can be located online more easily and often cheaper.

The NRS identified 6.4 million people who they classed as 'technophiles,' who used a lot of technology. They observed that technophiles are young people earning more than the average wage, and had a span of up to 25 newspapers and magazines, compared to an average of 17.

Smartphone users were found to be avid consumers of broadsheet papers such as the FT and the Independent, and "the 2.3 million technophiles aged 15-24 are ‘average issue readers’ of eight different newspapers and magazines in print, compared to the all-adult average of seven titles," seemingly busting the idea that young people do all their news reading online and in front of the TV.

For the newspaper industry, this will be somewhat of a relief, as it battles to keep its audience when so many other platforms make it easier to consume news, however online news flaws in the same way that iBooks and the Kindle have not flourished, and that is the lack of tangible object. There is a definite underlying satisfaction of the feel of the paper, as well as the layout of books, newspapers and magazines, and this could be what keeps the print industry alive. We are in an age where newspapers are trying to make themselves reader friendly and more appealing to want to pick up and read, with the Times transforming into a smaller 'compact' layout and the rise of the 'i' branch of the Independent, a newspaper which has had huge success.