People with more money in the U. S. are reading magazines less and getting their information through the Internet. A survey by a company known as Ipsos Mendelsohn states that magazine readership by affluent or rich people fell by 16% in this past year. The same people spent 12% more time using the Internet and also buying e-readers and tablet computers to read much of the same material presented in magazines.
Bob Shulman, president of Ipsos Mendelsohn, said he is personally seeing these changes occur on his commute into Manhattan where his office is located. He said, "I was talking to the guy who runs the newsstand at my subway station, and he said, 'Bob, I'm basically doing half what I was a year ago.'" Mr. Shulman said he believes much of the shift also comes from traditional media stepping up efforts to drive people to their websites.
He added that the consumer is becoming increasingly more comfortable with the alternative platforms like websites, e-readers, mobile phones, and other gadgets. Mr. Shulman said he believes the richer people can afford new gadgets and simply get their content in a different format, not doing away with it.
The Magazine Publishers of America agrees. "It has become increasingly recognized that traditional ways of audience measurement are not capturing the total magazine readership footprint," the group said in an e-mail statement. "Affluent are among the early adopters of new technologies, and thus it's more likely that they would be first in migrating some of their magazine readership to various new digital platforms."
The Ipsos Mendelsohn survey was completed only two months after the launch of Apple's iPad. It already shows nearly a million of the nation's more than 44 million affluent heads of household owned tablet computers and another 2 million owned e-readers. This unavoidable trend applies to not only magazines but also all sorts of media businesses.
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有錢人都不看雜誌了嗎？
在美國比較富裕的人，因為他們可通過網路來得到資訊，雜誌閱讀是越來越少。市場調查公司益普索‧門德爾松的資料就顯示，在去年，有錢人的雜誌閱讀率，下降了16%。這些人平均多花了大約12%的時間用在網路搜尋，並且購買電子閱讀器和觸動式平板電腦來獲得雜誌上相同的資訊。
益普索‧門德爾松的總裁鮑勃‧舒爾曼說，在他每天進出紐約曼哈頓辦公室的上下班途中，就親身體驗到了這種變化。他說：「在我平時上下班，經過的捷運站書報攤老闆對我抱怨說，他的生意基本上比去年减少了一半。」。舒爾曼先生說，他相信其中部分的轉變，也是由於這些傳統媒體，正在努力推動讀者上自家的網站去閱覽。
他還補充說，消費者也越來越能夠接受如網站、電子閱讀器、手機和其他電子設備所提供的閱讀平台。他認為較富有的人，他們可以負擔的起新的電子設備，而可以用不同的方式，輕鬆的來獲得資訊的內容，並不是他們不再想閱讀雜誌。
美國的雜誌出版商公會也同意這種說法。該組織在一封電子郵件中就提到：「我們更加認識到，傳統的閱讀方式，已無法跟上所有讀者的腳步。有錢人是屬於立刻就會跟上新科技的族群，因此他們就更有可能是首先將雜誌閱讀方式，轉移到使用各種新的數位平台上的讀者。」
就在蘋果電腦公司推出IPAD的兩個月之後，益普索‧門德爾松所完成的調查報告中顯示，全國已經有將近超過4400萬富裕家庭的戶主，擁有了觸動式平板電腦，而另外200萬則是已經擁有了電子閱讀器。這種不可避免的趨勢，不僅是對雜誌社，對其他媒體也有相同程度的影響。
＜文章結束＞
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