Readership of Oriwu Sun community newspaper in Ikorodu, Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

Community newspapers are designed to fill the information gap created by the urban-centric nature of conventional media houses. This aim cannot be achieved  without reading the disseminated messages by the target population. This study  assessed the readership of Oriwu Sun community newspaper in Ikorodu area of  Lagos state. Multistage sampling was used to select 240 respondents from three  Local Government/Council Development Areas. A structured questionnaire was  administered to elicit information on demographic characteristics, awareness,  readership status and readership scores from the sampled respondents. Data were analysed using frequency counts, chi-square and PPMC at 0.05 level of  significance. Results showed that respondents had the mean age of 39 years;  59.2% male; mostly with higher education (66.0%) and had lived in the community for about 16 years. Many of them (76.0%) were aware of the community newspaper, and 65.0% reported that local content was the main attraction for its readers while nonreaders were constrained by access (50.2%). Despite the low readership base, the community newspaper had high readership scores among the readers. Education ( χ² = 30.147, p ≤ 0.05) and perceived size of community ( χ² =11.286, p ≤ 0.05) were significantly related to the readership of the community newspaper. It is therefore recommended that the publishers should improve on their Oriwu Sun community newspaper distribution strategies.

Key words: Readership scores, Oriwu Sun, Community newspaper and Community development.