John W. Miller, Chancellor University of Wisconsin-Whitewater has come out with his 2004 report on America's most literate cities with populations over 200K. Miller rates cities according to education, newspaper statistics, publications published, library statistics and booksellers.

San Francisco ranks tenth overall behind (1) Minneapolis, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Madison, Cincinnati, Washington, DC, Denver, Boston, and Portland.

San Francisco is in the top ten for the Publications (#4) and Booksellers (#1) categories. Publications is based on number of magazine publishers with circulation over 2500 (gross and per capita) and number of journals published with circulation over 500 (gross and per capita). Booksellers is based on number of retail bookstores, number of rare and used bookstores, and number of members of the American Booksellers Association.

San Francisco is #30 for Education, with the education level of the adult population being the factor. Interestingly enough, the site says, "Education Attainment was indexed with two [sic] variables. 1) Percentage of adult population with an education level of 8th grade or less 2) Percentage of adult population with a high school diploma or more 3) Percentage of adult population with a bachelor's degree or higher."

San Francisco was #35 for Newspaper Circulation. The rankings were based on circulation weekday and Sunday for "City Zone circulation," "Designated Market circulation," and "Total circulation."

Even sadder, San Francisco was #35 for Public Libraries, which was based on statistics of school media personnel per 1K public school students, number of branch libraries per 10K library service population, number of library Internet connections per 10K library service population, volumes per capita, circulation per capita and professional library staff per 10K library service population.

Seems San Franciscans read, they just don't read the paper and don't use the library.

(via Deck Deckert)

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:37 PM|| |