T-Squared: We Know Who You Are

As we fan out across the state to solicit memberships, major gifts and corporate underwriting, we're hearing only good things about the size of our audience — a 25 million page view run rate in the first year is no small potatoes — but we're increasingly getting questions about who that audience is. Who's reading the Trib? How old? How well-educated? How rich? Registered to vote? Marital status? Interests and activities?

So a little over a week ago, we asked everyone who's given us their email address (12,000 of you, to be exact) to fill out a short survey. We hoped to get a couple hundred responses, but instead we got more than 1,000 in 24 hours, and the information we collected was truly surprising. The audience we've attracted is even better than we had a right to expect.

Since we're talking incessantly to ourselves about what we learned, I thought I would share it with you.

Trib readers are...

* more male (58 percent) than female (42 percent)

* neatly spread out, age-wise (24 percent younger than 34, 22 percent 35-44, 22 percent 45-54, 32 percent over 55)

* extremely well-educated (90 percent have a college degree; 47 percent have a graduate degree)

* enormously engaged (98 percent are registered to vote; 93 percent voted in the last election)

* upper-end, career-wise (88 percent self-identify as professional/technical/proprietors/managers/business owners/corporate officers)

* well-to-do (22 percent put the market value of their home at more than $500k; 58 percent claim a household income of at least $100k)

* more apt to be homeowners (75 percent)

* more apt to be married (63 percent) with no kids (41 percent) or none living at home (25 percent)

* frequent movie-goers (70 percent), restaurant-goers (71 percent), book readers (69 percent), museum-goers (67 percent) and concert-goers (67 percent)

In short, influentials, elites, opinion shapers, leaders — precisely the kind of folks anyone would love to get their journalism, or their message, in front of. Not bad for seven months. We couldn't be happier.