The survey says: Newspapers' value remains undiminished

While newspapers have shared the pain of an economic recession along with the rest of the country, they remain a valuable institution in Indiana communities.

Newspapers provide local news like none other. Newspapers connect consumers and businesses like none other. Newspapers keep local government accountable like none other.

Yes, we've all read or seen how large newspapers in places like Denver and Seattle have closed their doors. Yes, naysayers are predicting the death of the press at the hands of the Internet. Yes, there are some fundamental changes to the traditional economic model for newspapers, particularly with classified advertising.

But I see community newspapers surviving as long as they stay true to their mission -- holding up a mirror to their community for readers to see in a single, convenient package.

The evidence is there to support my belief.

In communities with newspapers that have a circulation of 25,000 or less, a national survey found that 86 percent of adults (18 or older) read a newspaper every week. In Indiana, all but a dozen newspapers fall into that category and half of that dozen are less than 13,000 readers over that threshold. (The 2008 study was performed by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri for the National Newspaper Association.)

Sixty percent said the newspaper was their primary source of news and information about their local community. Compare that to television (11 percent), friends and family (9 percent), radio (6.6 percent), and the Internet (3.4 percent).

For good or excellent accuracy, newspapers scored 72 percent, compared to 51 percent for Internet news. Sixty-six percent of adults feel newspaper reporting is fair, compared to 43 for the Internet.

The connection newspapers bring between its readers and businesses remains strong.

The survey found 73 percent of adults read the grocery or supermarket advertisements and inserts in newspapers. Ten times more adults rely on newspaper ads for grocery information than those who rely on direct mail.

Twenty-eight percent of adults rely upon newspaper advertising for home improvement shopping information -- three times more than those who rely upon the Internet.

The majority want advertising in their newspaper. The same can't be said for other mediums.

Seventy-nine percent of respondents said they would rather look through newspaper ads than watch TV ads. Seventy-five percent said they would rather look through newspaper ads than view ads on the Internet.

While newspapers, readers and advertisers all profit from this symbiotic relationship, the other benefit from newspapers is the accountability it brings to government agencies.

"The only check on government power is a free and independent press," Rep. Mike Pence said at a panel discussion conducted in Washington, D.C., in June concerning the future of the newspaper industry.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism, said, "If newsrooms disappear, government business will occur in shadows. We won't know what we don't know."

At a presentation in September at Harvard University, New York University professor Clay Shirky said that newspapers are "irreplaceable" in their production of accountability journalism.

Alex Jones, director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in the Harvard Kennedy School, wrote in "Losing the News" that newspapers account for 85 percent of accountability journalism.

If newspapers closed their doors, Shirky said communities would sink into a "casual, endemic, civic corruption" without that reporter who routinely covers the city council and mayor.

"Those places will simply revert to self-dealing. Not of epic, catastrophic sorts, but the sort that just takes five percent off the top," Shirky said.

That shouldn't happen in Indiana with its nearly 200 paid-circulation newspapers continuing to operate profitably while adhering to their mission of reporting community news.

So add democracy as another beneficiary to the relationship between Hoosiers, advertisers and newspapers.

David is the executive director of the Hoosier State Press Association. HSPA is a trade association representing 175 Indiana newspapers of general, paid circulation. The only organization totally devoted to the protection and advancement of the newspaper industry in the state, it is nonpolitical and nonsectarian. The HSPA was founded in 1933.