Hi °C | Lo °C MORE than four out of five adults read a newspaper every day, according to the latest survey of Irish reading habits.
In a sign of newspapers' remarkable hold on the Irish public, the authoritative Joint National Readership Survey finds that 82pc of those surveyed have either read a daily newspaper the previous day or a Sunday newspaper the previous Sunday.
In a break with a 40-year-old tradition, the JNRS began to measure digital readership of newspaper sites along with newspaper readership recently.
Preliminary figures from this expanded survey show 3pc of the adult population relies on online newspaper websites alone for news while 11pc read online and paper editions every day.
"The findings of the JNRS 2012 demonstrate that newspapers are very widely read in Ireland and that the printed product remains the platform of choice for the majority," said Frank Cullen, co-ordinating director of the National Newspapers of Ireland.
Digital
The JNRS, which is gathered from interviews with 7,000 people picked at random, is including digital for the first time. The full survey will be published tomorrow and will give details of the readership figures for individual newspapers.
The new figures show that one in eight people accesses a newspaper online once a week.
This newspaper's recently relaunched website, Independent.ie, recorded another record month in January. As the country's top news website, it has increased the number of unique users by more than 70pc on March last year and kept its lead over the 'Irish Times' for the last six months.
Irish Independent
