A new report issued by The Media Audit reveals that 43.8 million U.S. adults have read an alternative newspaper or visited an alternative newspaper's website in the past 30 days. The study, which compared past four issue readership among 117 papers across 88 U.S. Markets, reveals an average readership of 374,296 adults in 2007 compared to 362,938 in the previous year, a 3% increase. Further, the average number of unique monthly website visitors among the 117 papers is 113,469 adults in 2007 compared to 106,139 in 2006, a nearly 7% increase.
Bob Jordan, President of International Demographics, observes ".... one of the benefits for alternative newsweeklies is the opportunity to reach outside the city where papers are not as readily available... there are a lot of people who come into the city from the suburbs for entertainment and these alternative newspaper websites are positioned as one of the best choices for restaurant, live music, and concert recommendations."
Among the highest reaching alternative newsweekly in the country, Madison Wisconsin's Isthmus has moved to the top of the list, reaching 37.4% of all adults in Madison, compared to 34.6% a year earlier.
Total reach is based on past four issue readership of the newspaper combined with past 30 day website visitors.
Alternative newspaper websites with the highest market penetration include: Madison Wisconsin's Isthmus (13.5% of the market), then:
Among the top 10 highest reaching alternatives based on persons 18+ is New York's Village Voice with over 2.4 million readers across the New York City metro area who read the paper or visited their web site, followed by:
More information from this report is available from The Media Audit here.