Posted on 11/05/2007 5:52:36 AM PST by PittsburghAfterDark
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.
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.
The Wall Street Journal was down 1.53% to 2,011,882 daily but USA Today posted a gain of 1% to 2,293,137.
The New York Post slipped this period with daily circ down 5.2% to 667,119 and Sunday fell 5% to 405,486. The New York Daily News also showed declines in daily circ down 1.7% to 681,415 while Sunday decreased 6.8% to 726,305.
Chicago Tribune - daily circulation slipped 2.9% to 559,404 and Sunday fell 2% to 917,868.
It's sister publication, the Los Angeles Times grew slightly up 0.5% to 779,682 while Sunday fell 5.1% to 1,112,165.
Daily and Sunday circulation at the San Francisco Chronicle has stabilized, down 2.9% to 365,234 and 0.6% to 430,115, respectively.
Both The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News experienced deep declines -- over 10%.
The Philadelphia Inquirer slipped on Sunday but gained 2.3% daily.
As expected, circulation -- at least paid circulation -- continues to decline sharply. For the past several years, publishers, particularly those at major metros, have been whittling back on circulation considered to be less useful by advertisers. Those papers fall into the category of other paid, which includes hotel, Newspapers in Education, employee, and third party copies.
With the business model under extreme pressure, publishers are also choosing to cut back on circulation in outlying areas and instead focus on "core" markets.
Of course, the trend points to fewer people reading the paper too as single-copy sales, considered a barometer of the industry, is decreasing at larger rates than the overall top line number -- somewhere in the ballpark of 5%.
For the first time, ABC also released comprehensive "audience" data -- print readership, online readership, unduplicated reach, and monthly unique users -- for roughly 200 papers. The industry is moving toward numbers that take into consideration all their products, including newspaper Web sites, not just paid circulation.
sounds like the NY Slimes is feeling the ‘pinch’.
This Lefty-Wacky stuff is like a drug. Eventually you get tired of saying that The Supreme Court was wrong in Florida and President Bush made a misjudgement in invading Iraq and you have to up the ante to say that Bush stole Florida in some kind of grand conspiracy and that President Bush invaded Iraq for nefarious reason, or giggles, or whatever. The point is, eventually you start treading in territory where even the New York Times will not go. So the Times readership winds up moving along to the Funny Farm, and leaving them behind.
The cure to this is to realign and start appealing to normal, centrist readers again. But they simply cannot bring themselves to do that.
I always thought it virtually suicidal for the print media to align itself with the forces of illiteracy.
Can someone tell my why this news warms my heart?
They had this same problem with the invention of the automobile. The “Buggy Whip” makers held on like grim death refusing to see the light at the end of the tunnel.But in the end...there was the tunnel’s end.
Must be due to a declining number of Engllish speakers.
ALL THE NEWS THAT’S FIT TO WRAP FISH IN
Have you seen their lame circulation ads? They are definitely on the Saturday Evening Post trajectory. They’ll die with the boomer generation. The boomers march through the institutions has wrecked the institutions. The universities are next.
Very good sign
USA Today’s circulation grew 1 percent ? Must be those piles of hotel papers that go unread.
It’s amazing. Hasn’t anyone at the Times ever attended business school?
If you are consistantly losing sales, then obviously you are doing something wrong. You are supposed to correct it, not subsidize it.
...because you’re reading it the morning after testing out that new chili recipe?
USA Today is one of the most republican hating papers around. People buy it because it has a large circulation and is easily available, and nice and colorful.
They’ve never printed a decent story about this administration yet. It’s like the editors get together and say, “How can we hate the president today?”
Today’s headline is, “Coaxed into retiring early, some victimized by financial scams”.
Some would ask how that fits anti-Bush. But it fits both the “economy is awful” and “Americans are suffering” template. The anti-Bush templates are thus:
1. The economy is awful
2. Iraq is a vicious quagmire.
3. The environment is disintigrating.
4. Our foreign policy stinks.
5. Americans are suffering and being abused.
When you consider hotel, restaurant, airport clubs, etc. the number of sold vs freebee copies is probably only about 40%.
I still travel quite a bit and when I do, I always ask to delete USA Today from my bill. If local papers were savvy, they’d go after this business and take out “Today.”
Geez, Pinch, even a first year business school student would be smart enough to know that once the price of the Sunday Times became higher than the price of a roll of toilet paper sales would decline.
The truly comical part of this is that they still don’t think they are biased. They have no reason to change until then.
“It’s amazing. Hasn’t anyone at the Times ever attended business school?”
The leadership of the Times is based on lineage, not competence. If the company were run as a business, the entire BOD and management would have been fired, tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail 20 years ago.
Time for another price increase to $5. That'll fix everything.
(That's what they did with the daily edition which now costs an absurd $1.25)
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