http://www.ccsu.edu/AMLC07/Overall_Rankings/31-50.htm

Do you smell spurious methodology? Stop questioning the legitimacy of the findings Sir Isaac Newton Harry Potter/Danielle Steele?
http://www.ccsu.edu/AMLC07/Methodology.htm

Daily and Sunday circulation for newspapers?
Yay, it's a dying if not dead tedium medium. And measuring literacy of Toledo by the popularity of the Blade?

Number of internet terminals at public libraries?
Toledo has wireless about everywhere for free and in the liberries. Why would I need to use the TPL's stationary dirty Dell's when I can use my own laptop wherever I want. Plus it seems like it's mostly kids playing games or on myspace related sites on library 'putes. Not really reading.

“Number of Unique Visitors” and “Number of Webpage Views” to a city’s internet-version newspaper?
This is measuring the Blade's internet site, whatever that is. An aging medium on a new medium is still an old medium. You can get 95% of the info from other sites.

Magazines and Journals Data?
Most magazines are TV shows without moving pictures and the ones worth reading are available in some form online and usually for free.

Booksellers and Stores Data?
No internet sales? Stephen Hawkings' book was one of the most widely purchased and unread book ever (the standard religious texts probably win out). Buying and reading are 2 distinct things. Maybe the books bought in Van Nuys are gifts to send to their friends and family in Toledo.

Educational Attainment Data?
Who equates education with literacy? Especially when a lot of people learn to read outside school and there's probably more reading done outside of school in general.

Library Data?
Don't have a problem with that as long as you eliminate most fiction, most DVDs, most fad health/diet books, anything you'd find on a coffee table, most biographies, most Time/Life picture books, most magazines... actually have no problems with libraries, so nix that.

Point being all these silly rankings of cities are pointless and based on arbitrary attributes.
The national literacy fate for both men and women over 15 is 99.0% Any variation from city to city is probably minimal. I like to count myself as one of the special elite one percent that can't read.

But the people who read the most are probably people whose job it is to read a lot. That is people like English teachers who gave me Ds for papers I plagarized just like MLKjr did to earn his doctorate scribbled.