• Editor & Publisher, Tuesday, October 20, 2009 11:12 PM

For newspapers, it increasingly looks like local is golden. A new National Newspaper Association survey found that 81% of respondents read a local weekly paper each week, and those readers spend an average of 40 minutes with the paper. About three-quarters say they read "most or all of" the publication.

The NNA survey, co-sponsored by the Missouri School of Journalism, surveyed 500 adults. Researchers also found that readers, on average, share their paper with 2.36 others and nearly 40% keep their community newspaper more than a week. Almost half say there are days they read the newspaper as much for the ads as for the news.

How about online? Only 12% say they often read local news online. Among those going online often or irregularly, 63% got their local news fix on the local newspaper's Website, compared to 17% for sites such as Yahoo, MSN or Google.

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