A poll conducted by AOP finds that readers prefer online publications to print for speed of access and convenience.

The Association of Online Publishers polled 26,926 online newspaper and magazine readers across 37 sites and found that 72 per cent of newspaper respondents and 66 per cent of magazine respondents found the publications’ websites and offline equivalents to be equally reliable.

The survey found that:

60 per cent of newspaper readers consider online easier to access than print. For magazine readers, the preference was less marked, though 48 per cent of respondents still favoured the publications’ websites for ease of access.

In many respects, readers trusted the brand of the news/media provider and the format that content came in did not have any impact on that trust.

The survey does not spell doom for print media, though. Three-fifths of respondents did not want to choose between website and print formats, since the two fulfilled different needs and were better suited to different environments. Print publication are viewed as more satisfying than online versions by 50 per cent of readers. The proportion could well be higher than the research suggests. Since only website users were polled, the opinions of readers who only ever use print versions of the products cannot be divined, but would presumably show a preference for offline media.

The report is available for AOP members from the organisation’s website here.