What Helps A Newspaper Survive Among Centuries?

Though there is no set of qualifications that provide direct proof behind the longevity of these publications, the trends we found in our data attribute the papers' long lives to a few particular qualities:

 

Where The Newspaper Was Founded

 

The majority of the nation's oldest newspapers still in circulation have been founded in cities. Having a relatively large amount of consistent readers, which is possible in cities due their dense population, helps a publication stay in circulation.

History Of The State

 The states that were established earlier in our nation's history harbored a growing readership earlier as well.

 

The Type Of Publication: Weekly, Daily or Online

  The greatest number of publications in our dataset were daily newspapers. It is possible that publishing daily makes the readers more loyal to a publication and they start to rely on it as a source of information. This also helps a newspaper survive longer.

A Myth - Busted?

Does winning national prizes help the longevity of a publication?

At the start of our project, we hypothesized that winning national reporting awards would help to keep a newspaper in circulation. Surprisingly, we did not find a strong enough correlation in our research to support this claim.