December 19, 2003 – Independent Reading

The Independent is Santa Barbara’s free weekly progressive newspaper.  Each Thursday, neat stacks of it magically appear in coffee shops all over town.  This week, a member of the dedicated edhat staff crassly asserted that no one reads the feature story in the Independent – it is too long (over 2,500 words per week) and too politically correct. Others in the staff disagreed ... and an edhat daily tidbit was born.

Yesterday, the dedicated staff of edhat.com went out to the places in town where people gather and read. With the slyness of international spies, we peered over the shoulders of unsuspecting Independent readers to witness firsthand what articles they were focusing on.  We categorized their interest into 6 categories:  Feature Story, Other Articles and News, Letters to the Editor, Entertainment Calendar and Reviews, Classified Ads, and Flipping (people who never actually read any of the newspaper, but just methodically turned over each page, never coming to a complete stop).  We had meant to check for people reading the Angry Poodle, but there was no poodle this week.

It is noteworthy that the Independent’s feature story this week has an edhat connection. Roger Durling, the featured head of the Santa Barbara Film Festival, was an observation counted as “hatless” in last week’s State Street Hat Survey.

The biggest trouble with yesterday’s data collection was actually finding people who were reading the Independent. Even though 40,000 copies of the Independent were distributed on Thursday, the newspaper’s readers were outnumbered by their LA Times and Santa Barbara News Press counterparts 2 to 1.  Thursday is also publication date for the popular Weekly Auto Trader.  Although actual readership was low, many people had in fact picked-up an Independent, but never actually looked at.  Some of them took it home.  Presumably, people will read the same things at home as they do in the coffee shop.

It took the whole day and multiple visits to almost every public place in town for the dedicated staff to observe 100 readers.  Here are the results:

Entertainment 32% Other Articles & News 20% Flipping 20% Letters to Editor 16% Feature Article 8% Classified Ads 4%

Based upon our survey, it looks like the main use for the Independent has nothing to do with progressive politics or local interest.  The main use is for find something to do on Friday and Saturday night.

Multiple edhat subscribers chose Entertainment as the top category.  The lucky edhat drawing determined GrrOg as the the winner of the free movie passes. Better check the Independent to see what’s playing?

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