A third of people in Scotland have stopped reading printed daily newspapers in the space of 15 years, according to data from the Scottish social attitudes survey as reported by the BBC.
Its survey indicates that regular newspaper readership fell from 76% of Scots in 1999 to 41% in 2014.
The figures accord very roughly with the decline in the newsprint sales of most of the papers published in, or circulating in, Scotland.
Meanwhile, 33% of the people who were surveyed said they checked online news, which include newspaper websites, at least once a day last year. A further 11% check several times a week while another 7% do so at least once a week.
In terms of age, it was people in the 25-44 year old age group who accessed online news the most, with those aged 65 and over the least likely to do so.
The research was carried out by ScotCen Social Research. Its head of attitudes, Rachel Ormston, said: “It’s clear that the way we consume news is constantly evolving, with one in three of us now reading news online on a daily basis.
“While this figure still lags behind the four in 10 who say they read a daily newspaper regularly, newspapers’ struggles for sales are reflected in the very steep decline in regular readers we have recorded over the last 15 years.
“And the ageing profile of regular newspaper readers means that this decline may well continue: newspapers will need to be increasingly fleet footed to compete with online rivals, particularly where the latter are free of charge.”
Source: BBC
