Newspaper Readership Among Young Adults
Newspaper readership is concerned with people regardless of any type of classification including occupation, career, employment, religion, social class and language. Evidently, newspaper readership tends to influence the subject, and purpose of news events coverage indirectly; for reporters, editors offer room of freedom for events which highly possible stimulates the readers’s interest (Layefa, Johnson and Taiwo, 2016). According to Oloruntola as cited in Morka and Orukamayan(2015), stated that news must not solely be associated in an absolute sense of being news, it ought to be the type of news that the readers will be fascinated. On top of that, a newspaper that capable satisfy the curiosity of readers is highly preferred to its competitors.
According to the World Association of Newspapers, as cited in Freeman’s research (2013), young adults consider the internet as the main source for news and information. Besides, she mentioned that young adults’ news consumption behavior has mainly focused on newspapers in most studies and they have been confirmed that the readership among young adults is decreasing over the years. Moreover, young adults found it is more preferable to use social networking sites (O’Neill, 2007; Gil de Zúñiga & Valenzuela, 2009). In fact, online news is abundant over the internet and it is easy to get access than traditional media (Freeman, 2013). Likewise in Anderson’s study (2018), users now can reach greater news sources from the internet compared to the past as in this era of technology, any information can be reached in seconds at the tip of finger. Consequently, traditional journalism is forced to cast out of its conservative complacency due to the arising of the new digital environment. As a matter of course, newspapers found themselves difficult to sustain in the market at the same time satisfy consumers’ growing needs. Therefore, print news outlets must redefine their customer segmentation and best approaches to satisfy the readers’ needs.
On the contrary, formal education is another major influencing factor of a person’s preferred news medium. Unfortunately, there is too limited research topics on the relationship between general level of education and interest in newspapers. According to Ognyanoya (2013), education is a never-ending journey which can be conducted through multiple sources, including conversations with community members who suggest that news, as a common information denominator, can become part of education. Comparatively, Freeman (2013) highlighted that American young adults are less likely to engage themselves with the news, whether using the traditional or new media. It could be observed that young adults in the 21st century are less interested in reading newspaper compared to their previous generations.
Nevertheless, gender is a vital aspect that give impacts on the readership among young adults. She stated that there are more male readers in Europe that consume news regardless of any format. Also, fewer researchers have analyzed the impact of race on newspaper readership. According to Pardun and Scott (2004), there is no any wide-reaching study that particularly investigates the racial differences among young adults as newspaper readers. No doubt newspaper still remains as one of the most important and influential medium of news and information to all mankind.
