An in-depth analysis of news reading habits in the Maltese Islands with reference to local newspaper

UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE TASK II

After seeing a documentary about the rivalry of William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, I gained a lot of interest and decided to start independent research about newspapers and their relevance in a technology dominated society especially when taking into consideration Malta’s small population.

The initial media-text I stumbled upon was a youtube video made by the Wall Street Journal, an American business oriented daily newspaper, based in New York City. In this video, the News Corp-owned paper explains in detail what led to the decline in newspaper consumption. Jason Bellini stated that prior to the war the media house sold approximately 50,000 circulations a day. When World War II ended, the circulation boosted and in the 1940s they sold an average of 41 million copies a day, meaning 1 in every 3 American.

Despite the introduction of television to the world, there was not a significant decline in revenue as circulation remained constant both in the 70s and 80s with a high peak in 1984 making a total of 63.3 million papers in circulation.

Naturally, once technology was scattering around the world, decline was imminent. In 2011, the Wall Street Journal made 41.1 million less than the total numbers in 1945.

According to this video, originally posted in 2014, Bellini stated that experts thought that, whilst papers might eventually be extinct, it does not necessarily mean the end of the institutions themselves.

On the other hand, an article published by newspaperlink.com examines one of the reasons why the future generations will be less interested in the papers.

“The newer generations have been brought up with access to computers and other digital media devices. They are accustomed to getting nearly all of their information and much of their entertainment at the touch of a key or screen. Traditional newspapers do not offer the immediacy these generations have come to except.” (newspaperlinks.com, 2020).

In addition to that the article also agrees with what the experts said, that although the traditional hard copy newspapers will likely have a natural death, they will ultimately lead to digital form, nonetheless, the change in readership habits will be very unlikely and not as drastic, hence, the though the physical paper will no longer be published, the content will have to take another form, in our case, through the internet and social media.

After an analysis of these two media texts, I conducted a quantitative survey to examine myself the news reading habits of the Maltese inhabitants with reference to local newspapers and media houses, to examine whether they are still relevant in a multi-cultural and highly technological society.

The first group of questions were targeted to find out the demographics of the readers. The majority were all between the ages of 16 and 25. The second most common age group were those 46 and over with a total of 27%. On the other 14.% were in the age group of 26-35 and 12.4% were in the age between 36 and 45. The majority of the respondents, i.e 67.4% were female whilst only 32.6% of the 89 respondents were male.

Whilst the majority of the respondents were from the Northern Harbour with 28.1%, (Birkirkara, Gzira, Hal Qormi, Hamrin, Msida, Pembroke of Malta, San Gwann, Santa Venera, St Julians, Swieqi, Ta’ Xbiex, Tal-Pieta and Ta’ Sliema) respondents were fairly distributed around the islands. 19.1% were from the North side of Malta (Hal Ghargur, Mellieha, Mgarr, Mosta, Naxxar and St Paul’s Bay). Both the Southern Harbour (Cospicua, Fgura, Floriana, Hal Luqa, Haz-zabbar, Kalkara, Paola, Santa Lucija, Senglea, Hal Tarxien, Valletta, Vittoriosa and Xghajra) and South Eastern (Birzebbuga, Gudja, Hal Ghaxaq, Hal Kirkop, Hal Safi, Imqabba, Qrendi, Marsaskala, Marsaxlokk, Zejtun and Zurrieq) made up 16.9% of the total respondents, whilst 15.7% were from Western Malta (Had-Dingli, Hal Balzan, Hal-Lija, H’Attard, Haz-Zebbug, Iklin, Mdina, Mtarfa, Rabat and Siggiewi). Only 3 respondents were from Gozo, amounting to 3.4%.

There are many reasons that determine reading habits. Hence, I decided to ask my respondents about their level of education and their employment. These would further indicate whether they were literate enough, if they had any time on their hands, whether they would afford to buy the daily newspaper and what type of paper are they attracted to most. For instance, if someone has a bachelor's degree in business, one might be keen to read the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times.

The majority of the respondents all had a Bachelor’s Degree (Level 6) amounting to 24.7% with a close second 23.6% which only have secondary or ordinary education (o-levels). On the other hand 2.2% only have primary education and only 1.1% have a doctoral degree.

Out of the 89 respondents 40.4% were working on a full-time basis whilst 16.9% were full-time students that did not have any employment. 15.7% were full-time students and in part-time employment. 10.1% are employed on a part-time basis. 13 respondents or 14.6% did not have any employment and only 2 people were working both full-time and part-time.

Since Malta has many foreign residents as part of the population, I have questioned locals whether they would prefer that all local newspapers should be in English to accommodate the needs of people who do not understand the language. Surprisingly 78.7% did not agree that all local newspapers should be in the universal language, 13.5% were indecisive and only 7.9% or 7 people said that they agreed to newspapers written solely in english.

When asked directly about their reading habits 36% said that they do not read newspapers whilst the majority, 34.8% stated that they prefer reading the daily newspaper. 9% said that they read only once a month and 20.2% said that they prefer weekly local papers, i.e sunday publications.

Whilst the most preferred section of the newspaper is local-news (69.7%) and the second being international news (48.3%), the least liked section is the sports (28.1%) section and following after competitions (25.8%).

The main reason as to why people chose sports is because they do not interest them. On the contrary, the main reasons as to why competitions are not liked are due to the fact that they believe that it should not belong in newspapers.

One respondent explained, “competitions [such as] crossword puzzles are not beneficial and they are a waste of time and resources. People should read more information that they’re going to benefit from.”

Some said that opinion pieces and editorials in newspapers are not ideal since they are mostly composed of bias, “ Some papers are [too] biased and based on [attacking people] instead of giving the public correct information on current events” and “ newspapers are for news that [are] happening around as and not for others’ opinions”.

The most popular news paper was The Times of Malta and The Sunday Times, following after Malta today and it’s Sunday publication and the 3rd most popular was L-ORIZZONT. The least popular were, Il-Lehen and in-Nazzjon.

As part of a linear graph the majority agreed that ;

- Newspapers are important

- Newspapers are not outdated

- Online news is more efficient

- Printed News is not reliable more than online

- Online News is not reliable more than printed

- Newspapers should not be free

- Newspapers should not be discontinued

- Digitised Newspapers are not useless

- Newspapers have power

For the last question, I asked whether they believed whether and when newspapers will be extinct. The most popular vote was that they will not be extinct (38.6%). Others believed that they will be extinct in less than five years time (20.5%), 21.6% believed they will be extinct in 10 years time and 19.3% think that it will be extinct in 5 years time.

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References :

1. Newspaperlinks.com. (n.d.). Will technology cause the extinction of newspapers? [online] Available at: https://newspaperlinks.com/digital/will-technology-cause-the-extinction-of-newspapers/ <Acessed: 30 November 2020>.

2.Bellini, J. (2014). Newspaper Readership Then, Now and in the Future. Wall Street Journal. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lA_HD6g0HE4 [Accessed 2020 Nov. 30AD].

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