-By Joe Strupp

A new National Newspaper Association survey found that 81 percent of respondents read a local weekly paper each week, 73 percent read "most or all of it," and those readers spend an average of 40 minutes with the paper.

The NNA survey, co-sponsored by the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism, surveyed 500 adults, according to the report. NNA is the national organization for community, or weekly, newspapers.

Among its other findings:

• Readers, on average, share their paper with 2.36 additional readers.

• Nearly 40 percent keep their community newspaper more than a week.

• Three-quarters of readers read local news "often to very often" in their community newspaper, while 53 percent say they never read local news online (only 12 percent say they read local news often to very often online).

• Among those going online for local news, 63 percent found it on the local newspaper's Web site, compared to 17 percent for sites such as Yahoo, MSN or Google and 12 percent from the Web site of a local television station.

• 60 percent read local education news "somewhat to very often" in their newspaper, while 65 percent never read local education news online.

• 47 percent say there are days they read the newspaper as much for the ads as for the news.

• 30 percent do not have Internet access in the home.

Nielsen Business Media