The purpose oft his study was to find out the state of pri vate newspapers readership withrnempha sis on two newspapers: Capital and Addis FOltune. It majorly identified the readers of therntwo newspapers and tried to sing le out their respective reasons for read ing the newspapers andrnti.J11ctions that motivated readers to read frequent ly. In formed by Uses and Gratification theory asrna theoretical fi'ame work, the study employed both qual itative and quantitati ve approachesrnthrough target respondents identi fied by probableand quota sampling with data collection tools orrntechniques involving questionnaire and interviews. More than 212 readers and nonreaders werernselected as participant of the study. Surpri sing find ing obtained from this research is that therernarc high tendencies of readership for female married educated readers than male marriedrneducated readers and diploma holding ladies ha vc high readership than male with the samerneducational status. More overeonsi steney is seen with women who have interest in reading thernnewspaper than male even in a change of Ii res tyle of singleness to marriage. Thestudyalsornindicates that majority of people reading pri vate newspapers of Capital and Addis Fortune isrnyou nger aged, employed, single and degree hold er men.lt also showed that the ma in reasons torn) read both newspapers includesearching new jobs, getti ng information of important things,rnbroadening horizon of general knowledge and looking for ways of improving self Thernconclusion to this study shows readers have high frequency of readership but low readership inrnterms of spending time and pages covered.