Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

Figure 11: Decline in daily newspaper reach between 2005 and 2008 in per cent (all adults who 
claim to have read a newspaper the day before 
Source: TNO, based on data from EOCD, 2010, and WAN-IFRA, 2010. 
Remarkably, despite declining newspaper readership, the demand for and instant access to 
news has never been higher. Research by McKinsey shows that, in the last three years, news 

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Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
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consumption in the United Kingdom rose by 20 to 72 minutes a day (Nattermann, 2010). 
Researchers from the Pew Research Center for People and the Press come to similar 
conclusions for the US (Pew Research Center, 2010). Americans spend approximately 70 
minutes on news a day, and digital platforms play an important part in news consumption. 
Media users have access to a wide range of news sources and platforms. They consume news 
via paper, television, mobile phone, computer, tablet or e-reader. Purcell et al. (2010) estimate 
that half of all Americans use approximately four to six different platforms for news 
consumption a day. In this sense digital news consumption is more than making up for the 
decline in traditional news consumption, but online readers do not only use the websites of 
print newspapers but also use other ‘online only’ news sources. In other words: readers have 
fragmented over different platforms and news services and newspaper websites are but one of 
many options.
Figure 12 shows the development in how people use the different media for news 
consumption between 2001 and 2010 in the US (news sources consulted on a typical day). 
While television, newspapers and radio show a decline, the internet shows a steep rise. People 
increasingly turn to the internet to read and view news.