• by April 13, 2001

At long last, the newspaper industry has received something it was hoping to get for many years: A comprehensive study of its most tenacious and threatening problem, a long-term decline in newspaper readership.

As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

The initial reception to the study, first presented last week at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting in Washington, has been tremendous. All 500 copies disappeared from a table outside the presentation in just 20 minutes, according to the study's author.

"The response was beyond anything I've seen in the industry or in the academy," said John Lavine, a professor of both journalism and business at Northwestern University who headed up the study. "It couldn't be more exciting."

On the other hand, the survey also prescribes some tough medicine for newspaper editors and publishers, who have been fighting a losing battle for about three decades to retain readers. A proliferation of other media forms and busier schedules have been the most frequently blamed culprits for the decline.

Nonetheless, industry executives are eagerly poring over the recommendations in the study, which many see as the most comprehensive ever undertaken on the issue. Previous efforts have focused on certain geographic areas and types of stories that attract readers most, but the one released last week covers 100 major markets throughout the nation at nearly every size of daily newspaper.

The new study also looks beyond news coverage to see how advertising styles, customer service, a newspaper's brand and even the corporate culture of a newspaper company affects how much, how often and which parts of a newspaper people read.

Several of the survey's proposals to improve readership can be implemented with relative ease, such as increasing the amount and types of local news coverage, adding more feature stories on lifestyle and science and making the newspaper easier to navigate.

But other recommendations call for fundamental changes in the newspapering business, including an overhaul of corporate culture. The researchers found, for example, that more than 80 percent of the newspapers surveyed had "defensive" cultures that were "resistant to change," whereas papers with more "adaptive" cultures tended to have better readership.

"There was an appreciation of what's needed," Lavine said. "Will it be hard to get there? You bet."

The study recommends several broad proposals for improving readership: improving customer service, making editorial adjustments including more local news and lifestyle features, making papers easier to navigate, attracting more appealing advertising, building up the newspaper's brand image, doing more to promote stories within the paper and making corporate culture more "adaptive" and "constructive."

The review was undertaken over an 18-month period and examined, for the first time in one undertaking, every part of the newspapering business and how it affected readership, down to the physical condition of the actual newspaper when it arrives on doorsteps.

Newspaper circulation has also been ebbing in recent years, but the current study, which was done at a specially created Readership Institute at Northwestern University's Media Management Center, was focused instead on how, how much and how often people actually read newspapers as opposed to how many roll off the presses.

Industry executives say that while many of the initiatives will take time to see through, the survey contained a rich pool of data on how to make actual adjustments to their own businesses, not just in what kinds of stories to run but in how to make changes outside the newsroom, such as how to more effectively pair up advertising and stories.

"I'm very impressed with this study," Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian of Portland, Oregon, said. "It's the kind of thing you can bring in your newsroom and use for a base of discussion and analysis. The applications might vary from place to place, but as an overall tool, it strikes me as something very powerful."

Many newspapers have already been making adjustments to improve readership, but the study provided specific data on what kinds of changes were most likely to result in more people spending more time with the paper.

For example, the researchers found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, readership could be greatly improved by fewer stories about natural disasters, more complex stories on science and more stories on food and fashion.

Orage Quarles III, publisher of The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., said his paper has been undergoing a redesign for the past 18 months to cater more closely to readers' needs, including increasing arts coverage and regional news. But he said the study would provide a "road map" for future adjustments.

The study also found that greater attention to the types and styles of advertising content could lead readers to spend more time with the paper. For example, people were more likely to read the paper if ads for food, clothing and health products were featured.

Tim McGuire, editor of the Star Tribune in Minneapolis and the president of ASNE, which participated in the study, said it was "a little early" to gauge how the recommendations would be borne out in the industry.

"I think that's the one that's going to take the longest to work on _ getting a collaborative culture," McGuire said. "I think there will be more movement on the other topics such as making the newspapers easier to read and redefining local news."

The next measure of the survey's effect will come when additional data is presented to newspaper publishers at the annual convention of the Newspaper Association of America in late April in Toronto. The NAA also participated in the survey, but the research was conducted at "arm's length" from the industry, Lavine said.

The Readership Institute has funding through the rest of the year, and Lavine said he hoped the group would continue follow-up research over the next few years. But the decision to continue that work would have to be made by the industry associations some time this year.

The timing for a major rethink in the newspaper business is not ideal since a sudden advertising slowdown is consuming a great deal of publishers' time and attention. But John Morton, an independent newspaper industry analyst in Bethesda, Md., says the imperative to reverse the readership decline remains strong.

"Readership is the No. 1 problem in the newspaper business," Morton said. "How solutions are implemented varies from paper to paper, but there has been more emphasis on conducting research like this and using it as a way to make the newspaper more palatable."

The researchers selected 100 newspapers throughout the nation to get a broad mix of papers based on circulation, market size, urban and rural markets, different levels of competition, and other factors. Extensive 12-page questionnaires were sent out to 100,000 people, and 37,000 people responded.