2009's Most Literate U.S. Cities

USA Today reported yesterday on the "most literate cities" in America with a holiday surprise. For four years, Seattle and Minneapolis have traded the first and second places in the report. While Seattle once again nabbed the #1 spot this year, Washington, D.C. wrested the #2 position from Minneapolis, forcing the City of Lakes to #3.

Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University of New Britain, Conn., announced his findings for the seventh year. He studies six indicators: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.

This year, Miller correlated results with rankings based on other surveys by Forbes, Bert Sperling's BestPlaces, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and American City Business Journals.

To be honest, I was surprised he was still using newspaper circulation as an indicator [Shrug]. USA Today reported that Miller believes "Cities where lots of people read also tend to feature a vibrant singles' scene . . ." and that these cities "boast high rankings both as 'literate cities' and as places for single people to live."

Go here to read the entire article and go here to see the complete listing of the top 75 literate cities.