Is Philly.com Single-Handedly Saving This City’s Literacy Ranking?

The folks at Philadelphia Business Journal are touting a new ranking of the nation’s most literate cities as a big win for Pittsburgh—which moved into the Top 5—but it’s probably worth considering why Philadelphia ranks only 30.

The annual ranking from Central Connecticut State University president John Miller takes several factors into account to determine a city’s “literateness,” and Philadelphia is way down the rankings in most of them:

• The number of booksellers per 10,000 residents: Philadelphia ranked 45th, tied with Las Vegas.

• Education level: It’s based on the percentage of adults with either a high school or bachelor’s degree. We’re tied for 54th, with Houston.

• Internet resources: This, astoundingly, is where Philadelphia scores well—a calculation based on Internet book orders per capita, number of unique visitors the online version of the city’s newspaper, number of pageviews on that newspaper page, as well the number of households owning an ebook reader. Philadelphia ranks ninth in the country on this score—and given the weight it puts on the local newspaper website, that means that Philly.com may be almost solely responsible for the fact that Philadelphia finished as high as it did in the overall rankings! Either that, or there are a crap-ton of Nooks and Kindles being used in this city.

Ponder that for a moment. Which seems most likely?

• Newspaper circulation: Back down to 45th ranking.

• Publishers: This counts the number of periodical and journal publishers—Philadelphia ranks 18th, which isn’t shabby, and which also improves our overall score.

We’ll see if we can’t dig a little more and fine out the answer to the burning question: Is Philly.com single-handedly saving this city’s literacy?