Despite doomsayers proclaiming the impending death of the daily newspaper, a new survey conducted by Spectrem reports that 60 percent of affluent investors have a newspaper subscription.

 

Newspaper readership increases with net worth, the survey found. Four-in-ten affluent investors with a net worth of less than $100,000 have a newspaper subscription compared with 75 percent of those with at least $5 million. Not surprisingly, those who are the most confident about the financial knowledge are the most likely to have a newspaper subscription (67 percent vs. 55 percent of those who say they have little or no financial knowledge).

 

This is consistent with previous Spectrem studies that found a correlation between wealth and financial literacy. Two-in-five high net worth millionaires – those with investable assets of $5 million up to $25 million – described themselves as “very knowledgeable” about investing, according to a first-quarter wealth study. The percentage dropped to 11 percent for non-millionaires with $100,000 up to $1 million to invest.

 

Also not surprisingly, age is a significant factor in who does and does not have a newspaper subscription. Less than one-third (31 percent) of Millennials and Gen Xers under 40 are newspaper subscribers compared with 73 percent of those over 60.

 

Millennials were the most likely to “like” Facebook as a news source, another survey found. More than half said they log onto the social network for news and information. Of these, 58 percent said it was mostly news they had already seen or heard, while 29 percent said it was new information.

 

The website Newspaper Death Watch, created in 2007, keeps a running tab on newspapers that have gone to the great printing press in the sky. A recent Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism study found newspaper circulation down 0.2 percent and magazine circulation down 0.1 percent.

 

The newspaper industry has struggled to deal with a defection of advertisers to online sources as well as digital competition that affords users instant access to up-to-the-second news on their smartphones, tablets and computers.