This yearly publication contains a lot of useful information, yet the last three editions, which were still on the shelf when the 2009 edition came in, look untouched. It costs about $170 per year, which, granted, is not a whole lot compared to some of the titles we have reviewed. But think of it as eight $20 bills and a $10--are we throwing this amount away every year?
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The strength of this volume is the large section of market data for US cities that have daily newspapers. This includes, in addition to population and number of households, principal industries, number of banks and amount of deposits, railroads, shopping centers and retail outlets, colleges and universities, names of newspapers and other data. Although much of this information is available on the internet, the convenience here is the collection of these various pieces of information for each city. The sections on Population, Ages and Ethnicity, Housing, Income and Retail sales are more easily found online.
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It also includes Metropolital Statistical Area (MSA) rankings for such things as population, income, cost of living, high school graduation rates. quality of life, retail sales.
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Is this useful enough, and do we get enough requests for this type of information, to justify the price?
