Women Using Newspapers to Line Canary Cage

Colleague Jan Holbrook from The Mining Journal pointed out a recent article from the Rocky Mountain News that should have all business owners sitting up and paying attention.

As Mary Winter, author of the article, points out, "Eighty percent of people in newspaper stories are men. Seventy percent of photo subjects are men.  In other words, newspapers devote only 20 percent to 30 percent of their space to women."

Women increasingly feel left out and ignored when it comes to newspaper content, according to a study conducted by the Readership Institute at Northwestern University.  The article contains an eye-opening list of statistics on female readership of newspapers.  According to Edward Miller, managing partner of the Newsroom Leadership Group:

• Women are fleeing newspapers in droves. If present trends continue, 19 million women will drop their subscriptions in the next decade.
  
  
• As a bottom-line issue, it's "suicidal" for the industry to overlook women. Women make 80 percent of all household purchasing decisions, but newspapers, inexplicably, don't treat them like valued customers. "If we lose women, we lose advertisers, and then the bottom falls out," Miller said.
  
  
• Years of experience have proved that women readers won't accept half a loaf. They reject having "their" news neatly packaged in a "women's section."

Are you a small business owner who's been relying on newspaper advertising as your main source of marketing?  If the above statistics are true, you're probably already seeing a decline in response from your ads.

Assuming the newspaper industry doesn't catch on to what's really going on out there, what's a business to do?  Why continue to pour money down the hole of print ads when women aren't even seeing them?  And was newspaper advertising even the right choice in the first place?

Stay tuned... more to come in the next exciting installment...

Comments

[Yvonne DiVita]

Life is so coincidental...it's scary, sometimes. Here I am right in the middle of the Rocky Mountains, and you're writing about women and newspapers, via the Rocky Mountain news! Not to mention...I'm introducing blogging to my daughter (who live just outside of Boulder) and YOUR blog is one of the examples I showed her! Great post. I'll be referencing it in a future Lip-sticking, you can count on that.

[Pam Hawkins]

Well, thank God they aren't advertising in the Denver Post...

As for print ads in newspapers, you're right. What a waste of good paper. Newspapers used to be for news...duh. News articles are cut from the bottom to accommodate ads. Result: no complete articles and angry readers at 1)the editors who chose money from ads over copy, and 2) anger at the advertisers who spoiled the story.

And people wonder why women aren't buying newspapers? Wait until the men want more than the first two graphs....

Clue: we may not all use newspapers for birdcage lining; some of us have just opted to unsubscribe to local newspapers and prefer to go to online papers.

All in all, not a good choice for advertising.

[Bethany Murray]

You are absolutely correct!! I'm a sixty-year old woman with a Master's degree and I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in about 10 to 15 years. The reason? I felt invisible! I didn't like that my interested were delegated to the "Women's Section" which was usually were cooking and department store ads were prominent.

What I like about online advertising is that it is directed at my interests. I know there are downsides to that, but at least it ends the invisibility issue.

I got to this blog exactly that way. Through Amazon.com sending me an email about a woman's book I might be interested in. I was, and bought two books. In addition, they suggested some links about women's lack of interest in Newspapers and the impact that may be having on advertising.

Thanks for writing. I'm interested. Bethany