More on local newspaper coverage of business news and reader interest therein: An alert surfer sends this link to a survey conducted by the Readership Institute at Northwestern. The survey question was, "Where will improvements motivate people to spend more time with the newspaper and read more sections more often?"

The results:

1. Community announcements, obituaries, stories about ordinary people
2. Health, home, food, fashion & travel
3. Government/politics, war/international
4. Natural disasters/accidents
5. Movies, TV, weather
6. Business, economics, personal finance
7. Science, technology, environment
8. Police/crime, courts/ legal
9. Sports
10. Education
11. Parenting, relationships, religion
12. Arts
13. Automotive
14. Popular music
15. Jobs & career

(emphasis mine)

Here's the thing: I didn't raise this in the first place as a focus-group issue, although I respect the fact that people who run newspapers have to think in those terms to some degree. My interest is in news, and business news is important and has an impact beyond the business world; turns out, readers want to see it, too.