Abstract This is an exploratory study which describes a pattern of newspaper consumption that gives meaning to an otherwise ordinary activity. It explains a readership behavior which radically enriches and shape human energy into a ‘structured feeling’ of gratified usage of media product. Employing as its discursive unit of analysis, a pattern of communal cultural consumption, its socio-economic implications and the gratifications accruing there from, the paper adopts anecdotal evidence as explanatory cells; arguing that, its findings corroborates the theoretical praxis that cultural consumption functions as a socialization process that recognizes social class formation and the economics of consumption. The paper observes that ‘Buying the News … or read and return’ phenomenon reveals a unique socio-cultural reality of the larger Nigerian environment; concluding that, gender, socio-economic considerations and a rather unique (Nigerian) factor, define activities of ‘buying the news, not the paper’. Key Words: Buying the news, Media-Newspaper consumption, Readership styles, Culture especially, those in the Mass Communication graduating class of 2012 that enthusiastically helped to administer some of the subsequent 400 copies of the second questionnaire. #Note: This paper was first presented at the Carlton University’s Institute of African Studies Conference, Ottawa, Canada held in May 2013. Full Article Words: 8,869; Pages: 16
Stanley Naribo Ngoa (2020) studied this question.