May 20, 2025 | Scroll.in
News is vital to an informed democracy and newspapers in India remain the most credible news providers. Reinstating a national readership survey is essential鈥攏ot just for the publishing industry but for the health of India鈥檚 public discourse.
Harsh Taneja, Associate Professor of New and Emerging Media in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising
As a part of an ongoing research project, Harsh Taneja, associate professor of new and emerging media in the Charles H. Sandage Department of Advertising, recently published an opinion piece in the India news outlet Scroll-in. He focuses on the implications of not counting newspaper readership on advertising markets and the impact on democracy if the most credible providers of news disappear.
The Indian Readership Survey, suspended since 2020, is a crucial measure of public discourse, media habits, and socio-economic trends. “For the print media industry in India and their advertisers, this survey provides crucial insights into readership patterns,” Taneja wrote. “Newspapers need advertisers to stay afloat, and advertisers need readership numbers to justify their spending. Readership surveys make that possible.
“Newspapers play an integral role in civic culture,” Taneja continued. “Being informed empowers people to make more responsible individual and collective decisions. At a time when social media is rife with misinformation, and聽almost half of India鈥檚 internet users use WhatsApp for news, credible sources of information such as newspapers are more important than ever.”