Men Likely to Turn to Newspapers, CNN; Women Read More Books, Survey Finds

Men are more likely to read newspapers and watch Cable News Network but women are more likely to read books.

Young people, who generally are turning away from the news media, still read newsweeklies and business magazines.

Unlike most other media, television news generally is equally popular across all races and both sexes.

These are a few of the findings contained in a report, “The American Media: Who Reads, Who Watches, Who Listens, Who Cares,” published by the Times Mirror Center for People & The Press, an institute run by the Times Mirror Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times and various other newspapers, broadcasting and publishing enterprises.

The report is a compendium of demographic statistics on how people use the media, drawn from previously published monthly surveys that the center has conducted. In it are data about which media people use most, how much information they retain and how those findings break down in terms of sex, age, geography, education and marital status.

Books are one category with sometimes surprising results. According to the surveys, Westerners are more likely to read books than other Americans, particularly Southerners (43% versus 31%). Republicans are more likely to read books than Democrats (40% compared to 34%). Blacks are less likely to read them than either whites or non-black minorities (23% versus 39% and 31%). And married persons of all ages tend to read fewer books than single persons.

Once again, the statistics show that those in the 18-to-29 age bracket are less likely than their elders to read newspapers or watch TV news. But the same statistics indicate that young persons are just as likely to read certain magazines and to read books--indeed, often more likely than persons 50 and over, who generally are the heaviest consumers of news.

Newsweekly magazines, such as Time and Newsweek, are a case in point. Not only were 18-to-29-year-olds just as likely as those aged 30-to-49 to read newsweeklies, but younger adults were more likely than those 50 and over to read them (57% to 46%). In addition, nonwhites were more likely than whites to read newsweeklies (58% to 52%).

Members of minority groups also were more likely than whites to say that they sometimes or regularly read such magazines as Forbes or Fortune (25% to 16%).

And those under 30 were slightly more likely than those 50 and over to read the business magazines (19% to 14%). Indeed, the numbers of those readers in the 18-to-29 age bracket were roughly the same as those aged 30 to 49.

Adults under 30 also were more likely to admit reading personality magazines such as People or US, with the numbers decreasing with age. And women and blacks were three times more likely than other groups to read supermarket tabloids.

When people were asked what news source they used yesterday, 43% said they read a newspaper, 52% reported watching TV news and 53% said they listened to news on the radio.

But those who watched TV news regularly were more likely to watch a lot of it--more than an hour a day--a marked contrast to all other news media, whose audiences tend to shrink over time.

How a person obtains news appears to have made little difference in how “closely” he or she followed events, however, and it made only slight differences in the person’s ability to provide basic information about it--such as correctly identifying current newsmakers.

On certain kinds of news stories, or in answer to particularly broad questions, those who watched television even had a higher level of interest and information than those who said they regularly read newspapers.

But readers of business magazines--a group that included higher percentages of minorities and younger people--tended to be relatively well-informed.

Interestingly, those who watched Cable News Network regularly retained markedly less information than those who listened to National Public Radio, even on such basic issues as the identity of Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel or Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan or the outcome of the Nicaraguan elections.

In general, TV seems to have emerged as the egalitarian medium. Seventy-four percent of the respondents reported watching TV news “regularly,” whether they were men, women, white or nonwhite. Nor did other factors, such as education or political beliefs, make much difference.

Certain TV programs, however, appeal more to some groups than others. “The McNeil-Lehrer News Hour” on the Public Broadcasting System, for instance, has equal appeal between races, but is slightly more popular among men and among Westerners, according to the data.

But the TV show “A Current Affair”--one of the new batch of pseudo-news programs dubbed “tabloid TV”--appeals more to adults under age 30 and to minorities.

A majority (55%) of 18-to-29-year-olds say they sometimes or regularly watch the program--15 percentage points more than those who report reading newspapers. And 65% of blacks and 57% of other nonwhites report watching the show.

Cable News Network also had some distinct characteristics--at least among those who said they watched it regularly. For one thing, it was more appealing to men than women (30% to 20%). And it was equally popular across racial groups and educational levels.

And as several studies have shown, newspaper readership is becoming largely a function of age, as well as education. About 40% of adults under 30 said they read a daily newspaper, a figure that rises steadily to 71% for those over age 70. And those with a college degree are more likely than others to read a paper, though those with some college education are no more likely to read newspapers than those with only a high school diploma.

The statistics were drawn from several polls, each with samples of roughly 1,200. The sponsors of the study warn that the figures for specific publications are designed as indicators of viewership or readership rather than as precise measures of audience size.