• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, March 17, 2008

It's a boon to online, but bad news for newspapers.

Last week, a comScore study showed that younger people interested in news--a natural constituency in previous decades--are ditching print newspapers at an alarming rate. The good news: online newspaper sites are attracting many of these non-print readers.

Specifically, comScore found that 18- to-24-year-olds were 38% more likely than the general population not to read a newspaper in a typical week. The 35-44 cohort were 9% more likely not to read one. The flip comes with the 45-54 cohort, which were 24% more likely than the general population to read one.

Some would argue the data simply reflects the fact that young people are less interested in news in general. But the comScore study says it's just the reverse. Non-newspaper readers consume more news in general than heavy newspaper readers from a variety of online sources, including newspaper Web sites.

That's a plus for newspaper Web sites, with nonprint readers 4% more likely to visit The New York Times Web site, 6% more likely to visit The Wall Street Journal, 12% more likely to visit the Los Angeles Times, and 8% more likely to visit the Chicago Tribune.

But the news is tempered by the presence of myriad online competitors, as online news consumers also crave variety. They were 29% more likely to visit FoxNews online, 15% more likely to visit CBS News digital, 24% more likely to visit Topix, and 18% more likely to visit Google News.

The finding is further tempered by the relatively small size of online revenues compared to the rest of their operations. Online contributed about 10% of total revenues for The New York Times Company in 2007, 8% at McClatchy, and about 13% at The Washington Post and 5% at Gannett. However, in the latter two cases, the percentage growth is partly attributable to steep declines in overall revenues, meaning the basis of comparison is shrinking.