Even though many people thought that one day digital would engulf and overtake anything print. People are still very much interested in reading printed newspapers. Hybrid readers, or those people that read both the online and print version of their local newspaper , and the number of hybrid newspaper readers is also higher than online only readers, which is surprisingly the lowest of all forms.
In general, we are learning that people are always on the look out for where they can read about the news topics that they are interested in no matter wherever they are, to most people news is news. Most people are also much more likely to pay for a printed newspaper than for the online version which is expected to be viewed for free.
In the book “Trial and Error : U.S Newspapers ‘ Digital struggles toward Inferiority”. The author looks at several studies that show how the Print Industry backed itself into a wall. It was believed the younger people just would not be interested in print and therefore newspapers should focus their efforts on their digital editions and forgo effort on their print versions.
In reality, multiple studies have proved the contrary and that even among the youngest age groups print penetration was always the highest, and those participants researched between the ages of 18-29 were actually no more likely to read the news on their smartphones over older readers. ( p.g 59)
Younger readers have been determined to be more likely to trust the validity of printed news, and literature and believe offline formats hold a lot of valuable information. Statistics are now more readily showing that the ability to get news in so many formats is actually adding the amount of news that people are consuming over all . Those generations that are the youngest and were expected to have little to no interaction with print on a regular basis do read the newspaper quite regularly.