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I never know what to really make of this data, but Scarborough Research has released its 2008 Newspaper Audience Ratings Report. It aims to estimate, based on telephone surveys, how many adults look at a newspaper's print edition or website in a seven-day period. For Nielsen's Southern California market area of 13.1 adults, here's the ranking:
LANG papers * 2,963,000
OC Register 1,586,000
La Opinión 1,205,000
Riverside Press Enterprise 848,000
Ventura County Star 392,000
* The LANG number combines the readership of nine papers and their websites: L.A. Daily News, Daily Breeze, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Pasadena Star-News, Long Beach Press Telegram, Redlands Daily Facts, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, The Sun (San Bernardino) and Whittier Daily News.
OK, how about comparing the LAT's percentage of its market with the country's best-read papers? Nearly all major papers outperform the Times, some by a significant margin. Ranking after the jump:
Here are selected Tribune-owned papers, West Coast papers, or others:
San Diego Union-Tribune 59%
Las Vegas Review-Journal 59%
Portland Oregonian 59%
Arizona Republic 55%
Baltimore Sun 54%
Bakersfield Californian 54%
Fresno Bee 49%
Chicago Tribune 48%
Orlando Sentinel 45%
Boston Globe 44%
Hartford Courant 44%
Sacramento Bee 37%
Los Angeles Times 36%
San Francisco Chronicle 36%
New York Times 27%
Newsday 16%
For comparison, this region's number two paper, the Register, comes in at 12%. Hat tip for the link to Fishbowl LA.
* Also: The Press-Enterprise says it was the only major SoCal paper to add readers.