Poynter.org has a wonderful selection of articles about the media. Among them was this story from the American Journalism Review about a Washington Post focus group, where they gathered five new residents of DC and asked them if they’d subscribe to the paper.
“In one session after another, I don’t think I saw one person who would take it,” says a Post staffer who watched the focus groups with colleagues from behind a one-way glass. The participants picked up various sections–Style, Metro–and stared at them like they were “Egyptian hieroglyphics.”
They knew about the Post, of course. How could they not? It’s the region’s dominant daily and one of the nation’s best. They even liked the Post. But they read it online at work. Former subscribers complained unread papers piled up at their homes, making them feel guilty because they hadn’t read them. The responses were not ” ‘No, I don’t like the Post,’” the staffer says. They were ” ‘No, I don’t want that hulking thing in my house.’”
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