Magazines are top source of readership trust

According to a study by MediaVest, magazines are more trusted than online for content in the three areas of entertainment, food/cooking, and fashion/beauty. But online is more trusted for health/wellness information.

Here are the five key findings of the study:

1. Print is more trusted than online in every category but Health/Wellness. Readers find print more trustworthy than online by a margin of 24 percentage points for Fashion/Beauty, 7 points for Food/Cooking, and 5 points for Entertainment.

2. Readers find online Health/Wellness more trustworthy online than in print by a margin of 3 points. Despite the abundance of online content, few see online replacing print, with just 12% of respondents strongly believing that a publisher’s website could easily replace the printed magazine within the next 5 years.

3. Titles fail to deliver value online. 79% of dual magazine/online users agree that the online site should provide something new & different from the magazine. However, only 44% strongly believe that the publishers' sites are actually offering something unique.

4. Low duplication between print and online. Hovering between 1% and 6% for all categories but entertainment, where for certain titles, duplication reaches 10% at most.5. Fashion/Beauty relies most faithfully on the printed publication, as it focuses on general trends. People are seven times more likely to go to the print publication for this category.

Read the original press release: Print Trumps Internet as Primary Source of Readership Trust

Ad Age reports the story: "Print More Trusted Source of Information Than Internet"

Comments

[Michael Turro]

Isn't it a bit foreboding that the single area in which readers do trust online sources of information more than the printed variety is the single area that could kill them? When it REALLY matters where are they turning? And this is good news for magazines how?

[Josh Gordon]

Good point. But I see a different trend at work here as well. We have entered an era where the destiny of publishers is no longer limited by the delivery platform they work in. While there is a strong "trust” preference in most categories for print, I say, the content the collective group of publishers/editor in the health category is having impact here. We have entered an era where the medium is important, but content rules.