by Martha Farnsworth Riche
The author is a consultant on the demographic aspects of products and policies, and was director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1994 to 1998.

This month, the U.S. Census Bureau will start to release fresh, 10-year updates on its portraits of your communities. They’re coming just in time, because they reveal big differences when compared with past counts.

Census researchers will find normal population growth and change—and important trends for newspaper reading, including:

• Majority minorities in some markets, not just Hawaii, especially California and the Southwest

• More middle-age and older people, thanks to a growing life expectancy

• A record-high proportion of Americans in the workforce

• More “empty-nest” families than ones with full nests.

The biggest change: Longer life expectancy has created a population that has roughly equal numbers at every age except the oldest.

In addition, most midlife households are not currently raising children, so households of married couples without kids in the home and of single people each outnumber traditional mom-pop-kids households now. This results in more diversity within and among communities.

All newspaper managers need to know these and other facts about their community’s residents, and the census delivers the necessary data. Planners must listen to the numbers and respond to them, tailoring every aspect of their businesses to meet citizen, subscriber and advertiser needs, and finding new ways of doing business for emerging population segments.

How? Launch foreign-language inserts, focus on single-copy sales at the workplace, wed print and online reading experiences, or pitch print advertising to 20-something retailers.

For more ideas, see the department recommendations on pp. 28-29. Then, go find your numbers.

RESOURCES
Get your market’s data on the Internet at American Factfinder, www. census. gov. Block-by-block census counts will be released this month, followed by short profiles of neighborhood tracts starting in June. More detailed profiles aren’t scheduled before December. Regularly check the schedule at www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/c2kproducts.html.

Tabulations paid for by other government agencies, such as the place-of-work and journey-to-work data that the U.S. Department of Transportation funds, will come out last. These reports will be available from www.census.gov.

Your state has a think tank or university data center where specialists know the ins and outs of census data; get the address from www.census.gov/sdc/www. Another site, www.fedstats.gov, portal to all federal statistics, links to states and other public data sources.

If you’d rather spend money instead of time to get data, private firms like Claritas Inc. of San Diego or CACI of Arlington, Va., will do the work for you. You can find a full list of companies in the Marketing Sourcebook at www.demographics.com.

Keep up on how the experts examine trends via analyses by the Population Reference Bureau, www.ameristat.org.

American Demographics magazine of New York City interprets data for business needs and could offer some insights: www.americandemographics.com.

And the University of Michigan includes census data among a range of databases: www.lib.umich.edu/libhome/Documents.center/stdemog.html.

Happy counting!

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