Newspapers across the globe have experienced a negative trend in the amount of readers they recieve. This trend is mostly due to the availability of news through social media. People who use social media are exposed to posts about current events. Often times, a story will be shared on social media before newspaper staff have had time to cover the event.

Many newspapers have resulted to converting their content from paper to the internet. With the ever increasing popularity technology and online media outlets, some smaller newspapers have stopped printing completely, but instead make their paper a website.

Whether the change was due to convenience or to save money, the number of physical newspapers has gone down and continues to do so. Questions are repeatedly brought up because of this: how many readers have we lost to social media?

AHS the SPUD, a newspaper that changed from physical paper to the internet, sent out a poll to try to find out who still cared about our news. The poll was sent to each student of the school. Responding to the poll were 200 students, about half of the school’s population.

Students from each grade participated in this poll and gave their answers according to their knowledge and interaction with the material inside.

Out of the 200 students who responded to the poll, only 81, or 40 percent of those students have read the SPUD. 37 students at Alliance High School have not even heard of the SPUD, responding with “What even is a SPUD?”

Even though a lot of students have not read or heard of the SPUD, almost two-thirds of those who responded to the poll do know what the SPUD is.

Of the students who have read the SPUD, they were then asked to respond to the question: How often do you read the SPUD? Of the 124 responses to this question, 71 read the SPUD about once a month. Similarly, 24 students read SPUD stories about once a week, and 29 only read the SPUD when they are in one of the stories.

While a large percentage of our student population either don’t read or don’t know what the SPUD is, 122 of the 200 responders to the poll say they do care about the SPUD and the stories they produce, but 78 said they do not.

Whether there has been an increase or decrease in the amount of readers that the SPUD has received, a large percentage of the student body at Alliance High School don’t read the SPUD now. As the new year is ever approaching, maybe a New Years resolution could be to read the SPUD more.