Interesting Magazine and Digital Stats from Pew State of the News Media 2013

In reading the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media 2013 there were some interesting things in the sections on magazines and digital that I thought I’d point out.

Time is Doing Well Online

One is that among the news magazines examined Time.com has the largest online audience by far:

Despite this it didn’t make the list of top news sites by Facebook interactions, as rated by NewsWhip:

So there are apparently opportunities for further growth there.

News Magazine Readers are Old

Another is that news magazine readers are apparently old, middle aged, or just the right age (with plenty of income), depending on how you define those terms:

The median age of news magazine readers is 49 years vs. a 45.8 for the adult US population. The Economist’s readership however comes in at a spry 44.3 years old:

The median ages remained the same in 2012 vs. 2011. It will be interesting to see if this holds steady over the next 5-10 years, or if the figures will age along with the core audience these magazines currently attract.

AARP Kicking Butt on Circulation

Speaking of demographics, I didn’t realize AARP magazines had the largest circulation:

Their figures are up a little in 2012 too, while several others have dropped.

Mobile Creates Additional News Consumption

One encouraging aspect of the study is that as mobile news consumption grows it is not at the expense of other channels. Instead it is creating additional news consumption:

Combined with the modest but rapidly increasing mobile ad market, there’s a potential bright spot in a world of otherwise declining ad revenue: