Content or Design? Factors Influencing the Circulation of American and German Newspapers

What is it that helps newspapers gain or at least keep readers; is it the specific content they offer or measures of design? In an explorative secondary analysis, local daily newspapers in Germany are compared to daily newspapers in the US. The newspapers used in this study were analyzed twice, both in the 1980s and the mid-1990s. In the US, visualizing information and displaying it more generously were more important for positive developments in circulation than in Germany. In Germany, community orientation and an increased retrievability of content helped newspapers secure their sales figures. These different recipes for newspaper success point to cultural differences in what reading a newspaper means.