Pittsburgh: Nation's Sixth-Most Literate City

PITTSBURGH, PA - With its Terrible Towel-waving Steelers fans and an incorrect but lingering reputation as a city populated primarily by mill workers, Pittsburgh likely is one of the last places thought of as a haven for voracious readers. But it is.

Pittsburgh was rated the nation’s sixth most literate city in an annual study by Central Connecticut State University. The ranking was based on an analysis of six key indicators of a city’s literacy: number of bookstores, educational attainment, internet resources, library resources, periodical publishing resources and newspaper circulation.

“This set of factors measures people's use of their literacy and thus presents a large-scale portrait of our nation’s cultural vitality,” said Jack Miller, Central Connecticut State president emeritus, who conducted the study. “From this data we can better perceive the extent and quality of the long-term literacy essential to individual economic success, civic participation, and the quality of life in a community and a nation.”

For the fourth time in six years, Washington, D.C. was ranked the country’s most literate city. Washington was followed by Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta, San Francisco and Pittsburgh. Rounding out the top 10 was Portland, Cincinnati, St. Paul and Boston.

Photo by Jay Cross via Creative Commons.