Declining U.S. Newspaper Circulation Potentially Signals Decline In Literacy Critical To Nation's Economic Health

December 26, 2008 9:38 a.m. EST

New Britain, CT (AHN) - Americans are doing less well than global competitors on a key index of literacy, according to a literacy survey by Central Connecticut State University.

The sixth annual national literacy survey measures a key component in America's social health by ranking the culture and resources for reading in America's largest cities.

Author of the study Dr. Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, also reports on the impact of the internet on the decline of newspapers and finds the U.S. is not doing as well as its global competitors are on a key index of literacy.

"This study attempts to capture one critical index of our nation's well-being -- the literacy of its major cities--by focusing on six key indicators of literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment, and Internet resources. The information is compared against population rates in each city to develop a per capita profile of the city's "long-term literacy"-a set of factors measuring the ways people use their literacy-and thus presents a large-scale portrait of our nation's cultural vitality," Miller says.

The study, titled "America's Most Literate Cities 2008," identifies the top ten literate U.S. cities in this order: tied for first are Minneapolis, MN and Seattle WA, followed by Washington, DC, St. Paul, MN, San Francisco, CA, Atlanta, GA, Denver, CO, Boston, MA, St. Louis, MO, and Cincinnati, OH and Portland, OR tied for last.

A statistical profile was developed of cities with populations of 250,000 or more and for 2008, Miller also examined critical concerns.

That concern was that declining newspaper readership was caused by increasing online newspaper readers. This was the same assumption that having a book available online meant fewer local booksellers and less use of libraries.

However, what Miller found was just the opposite.

Examining the data for this and his past surveys, Miller found that top ranking cities for library use also have more booksellers, and that cities with more booksellers also have more people buying books online, and that cities with higher per capita newspaper circulation rates also had a higher proportion of people reading newspapers online.

"Cities that rank highly in one form of literate behavior are likely to rank highly in the other forms and practices of literacy," Miller said.

He noted that a literate society tends to practice many forms of literacy not just one or another.

Miller is now working on a similar study of international literacy.

A common benchmark for literacy is newspaper circulation and Miller's preliminary research shows that while newspaper paid circulation and advertising are going up worldwide, it is going down in the U.S.

About 1.4 billion people around the world now read a daily newspaper, with the U.S. ranking No. 31 in the world for circulation.

Japan's paid circulation is three times that of the U.S., and on average, Japanese newspapers cost three times what they do in the U.S.

Among other nations, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Venezuela, Finland, Greece, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Norway all exceed U.S. newspaper circulation figures.

Although Miller says it is still too early in this new study to draw conclusions, he does note that the healthy newspaper readership rates in much of the rest of the world are striking compared to declining newspaper readership in the U.S.

He also notes that declining U.S. newspaper circulation rates might be a cause for national concern because literacy is generally regarded as a barometer of a nation's social, cultural, and economic health.