Newspaper circulation drops like a rock (ha-ha!)

Editor & Publisher ^ | November 4, 2007 | Michael McCullough

[DallasMike]

There's nothing like a good dose of schadenfreude to make one's morning. From Editor & Publisher:

NEW YORK The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007. Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation (see chart, separate story), only four showed gains.

According to an analysis of ABC figures, for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617. For 609 papers that filed on Sunday, overall circulation dropped 3.5% to 46,771,486. The percentages are based on comparisons from the same period a year ago.

For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394, at least partly due to a price increase.

Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428.

Daily circulation at The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same, 6.5% to 548,906.

Aww, The Washington Post and The New York Times fall down and went "boom!"

A full chart of the the nation's largest newspapers can be seen here. Note that the daily readership for the Dallas Morning News dropped 7.68% while the Sunday readership dropped 7.64%. As I've said before, the "big dopes at the Dallas Morning News still don’t have a clue that it’s their shoddy journalism that’s losing readers. The Dallas-Ft. Worth area is one of the fasting growing regions in the country but the News can’t sell papers here because it’s so out of touch with reality."

[DallasMike]

[stuartcr]

Thankfully, our local newspaper is still going strong.

[cowtowney]

There’s a certain Schadenfreude in seeing the Dallas Mornings News go down the tubes. They’ve been lying to you Dallasites for so long. They have their own distorted reality down there.

Just look at their reporting on Dallas’ Big Dig - the Trinity River Project...totally biased.

I guess the conservative folks in Dallas are fed up with the pro-abortion, big gubmint, anti-Bush folks down in their ivory tower.

[DallasMike]

conservative folks in Dallas are fed up with the pro-abortion, big gubmint, anti-Bush folks down in their ivory tower.

Not only that, but the Dallas Morning News is now mostly filled with stories from The New York Times, The Washington Post, AP, and Reuters. They do very little of their own writing any more except for sports and entertainment.

[cowtowney]

Many big city newspapers have relied on:

National/International News - now you get it on the internet faster
Local News/sports - this is the only purpose, which is where they are vulnerable
Classified Advertising - going to internet
Editorial Page - Notoriously liberal

As soon as the classifieds get solidly on the internet and someone starts reporting on local news and sports, they are really done.

[stuartcr]

I hope I never get to the position where I will take my computer out to the porch with a cup of coffee, and read the sunday paper.

[cowtowney]

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644523779

I think this is the future of newspapers.

[stuartcr]

I don’t really think the majority of people will want to pay the price for one of these, and go through the effort of downloading everymorning, when all they have to do, is go out the front door, and get the paper. Besides, how can more than one person use it at a time? Now, people can hand out the sports to one person, headlines to another, etc, they can bring it to work for others to read or wrap stuff in it when they’re done. I for one, hope the newspapers stay around for at least 30 or 40 yrs more.

[cowtowney]

“I for one, hope the newspapers stay around for at least 30 or 40 yrs more.”

I think the question is interesting because most older people who are used to a newspaper like its utility. Most young people do not read them. They either a) get their news online or b) get their news from shows like Jon Stewart, or c) get the news from those newspaper-ettes, like Quick (in Dallas).

[stuartcr]

I’m getting older...besides, computers are too impersonal to me, hard to get comfy in a chair and read something that requires a power source.

[directorblue]

Great find. Here's a pingback that combines those findings with Tony Snow's speech about the First Amendment.

[cowtowney]

Perhaps that CueCat was the future of newspapers... D’oh!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat