BI readers are an engaged bunch. To me, that is one of the most important lessons of the online survey we conducted last month.
Four hundred and ninety-six of you took the survey, equivalent to one in every 18 BI subscribers. Most were among the 5,000 subscribers who received emails form us because they had given us their email addresses. Judy Greenley, the Statesman business analyst who posted the survey, says the only Statesman survey that received a higher response rate in recent years asked about comics.
While the BI survey was not scientific, it was telling. To take part, you had to take time to go to a website and answer up to 85 questions: 40 multiple-choice questions about the magazine and 35 about the daily business section, plus 10 questions seeking written comments. Yet only a couple of participants complained.
Many of the items we asked about received higher readership than I guessed they would. Nine in 10 respondents said they read one- and two-page local business features in the magazine frequently or all the time. Nearly three in four said they read longer articles always or frequently. Among 12 categories of regularly published staff-written content, the least popular was the Datebook, our calendar of business events, which garnered 38 percent. I still consider that impressive.
I’ll have more to say on the survey in a few weeks. For now, I want to express our gratitude to all of you who took it. Thank you.
DAVID STAATS: Editor of Business Insider. dstaats@idahostatesman.com.
