Reading Newspapers Ranked Lowest Versus Other Media for Early Teens

Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 2004 by Pardun, Carol J, Scott, Glenn W

Researchers have long been interested in adolescents' media use. Surprisingly, however, few studies have investigated young teens' newspaper consumption habits. These studies document the significant declines in newspaper readership in general and among young readers in particular.1

Fewer researchers have examined the impact of race on newspaper readership.2 Additionally, there are no large-scale studies that specifically look at racial differences among early adolescent newspaper readers. This study attempts to address that gap.

Background

Newspaper studies indicate that adolescents who avoid traditional news consumption in their teen years3 will most likely continue the behavior into their adult years.4 Therefore, industry groups such as the powerful NAA and the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) have renewed a focus on capturing the interests of younger news consumers. The Newspaper Association of America has optimistically argued that the battle for youthful readers has by no means been lost. Citing figures from a 1998 survey by Teen Research Unlimited, the NAA estimated that 75 percent of teens spend 2.5 hours a week reading newspapers. Their favorite sections: comics, sports, entertainment, and horoscopes. Even if teens use newspapers widely, however, they don't necessarily find them relevant.5

This increasing focus on the reading habits of children and teens underscores the importance of understanding adolescent newspaper use in the context of a contemporary environment full of media choices. Indeed, there is no shortage of media vying for young people's attention. Most recent research describes contemporary American adolescents living in a world where the mass media are pervasive. Roberts found that a majority of adolescents, aged 8 to 18, owned a radio (70 percent), tape player (64 percent), a TV (53 percent), and a CD player (51 percent) - all in their bedrooms.6

Racial Issues

Even less attention has been focused on racial patterns of news reading. Much of the research on race and the news has focused on how blacks and whites are portrayed differently in the news, particularly in crime reporting.7 Others have focused on content analysis in the electronic media such as studies that focus on minority representation on television.8 A few others have investigated how race impacts our interpretation of news stories.9

Given both the clear need to gather more age-sensitive data on teen media use and the importance of examining such use according to different racial backgrounds, this study captured data on newspaper readership by a diverse demographic sample of middle-school students entering their teenage years.

Research Question

The study addresses the following research question:

RQl:

To what extent does race play in early adolescents' use of newspapers?

Method

Students from three local school districts in the Southeastern United States were recruited during fall 2001 to participate in a survey that gathered information about their media use. Researchers sent about 5,000 surveys to students at their homes. A total of 3,261 students (65 percent) returned the media survey with signed parent/ guardian consent. Participant demographics were generally representative of the entire student body, although African-American males were underrepresented in the sample compared with the school population (18 percent vs. 22 percent) and white females were over-represented (26 percent vs. 22 percent). The age of respondents ranged from 11-16. The mean age was 12 years and 9 months. The mode was 13.

Results

Nearly two thirds (62.4 percent) of the sample reported that their family subscribed to a newspaper, with whites subscribing at a higher rate (70.6 percent) than blacks (55.4 percent) (n = 2,931, df = 1, Χ^sup 2^ = 81.362, p

Low socio-economic white students were less likely to subscribe to a newspaper than were high SES white students (Χ^sup 2^ = 58.621, df = l, p

Newspaper Readership

The young teens were asked how many days out of seven they were likely to read the newspaper or watch the news on television. Whites read the paper more days (2.18) compared to blacks (1.97) (n = 2,669, df = 2,667, t = 2.174, p

Students were asked to reportwhat kinds of grades they typically got in school. Curiously, while there was no significant difference in the interaction of grades and race with watching the news on television (whites: n = 1,454, df = 3, F = 1.409, p

Sections Read

Overall, comics were the most read section (71.1 percent) followed by sports (56.6 percent) and entertainment (41.5 percent). For the most part, blacks and whites preferred different sections of the newspaper as Table 2 shows. White teens read international news, comics, horoscopes and advice columns at a higher rate than did black teens, while the black adolescents preferred local news, celebrity news, lifestyle and entertainment. There were no significant differences in U.S. news, advertisements, or sports.

Newspaper Importance

To get a clearer picture of the role that newspapers play in these mediasavvy teens' lives, the young adolescents were asked to rank the importance of different media in their lives. More than half (51.3 percent) of the sample said they could live without reading newspapers. In contrast, only 7.4 percent said they could live without music. Blacks and white had significantly different views on how important each medium was, with the exception of renting movies (which was rated relatively high by both groups) and reading a newspaper. Reading the paper was ranked the lowest by both demographics. see Table 3.