Most newspaper circulation down
NEW YORK (AP) - April 28, 2008 Those papers eked out gains of under 1 percent, while The New
York Times, the No. 3 paper, fell 3.9 percent in the six months
ending in March, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Newspaper circulation has been on a declining trend since the
1980s but the pace of declines has picked up in recent years as
reader habits change and more people go online for news,
information and entertainment.
National newspapers like USA Today and the Journal have tended
to hold their ground better, as have smaller-market dailies where
competition from other media like the Internet isn't usually as
intense.
Gannett Co.'s USA Today remained the top-selling paper in the
country with an average daily circulation of, 2,284,219, up 0.3
percent, while The Wall Street Journal rose 0.4 percent to
2,069,463. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the Journal's parent
company Dow Jones & Co. last December.
The New York Times Co.'s flagship paper remained the
third-largest with circulation of 1,077,256, down 3.9 percent from
the same period a year earlier. That company also owns The Boston
Globe and International Herald Tribune.
Metropolitan dailies have suffered the worst declines, a trend
that continued in the most recent reporting period, with the Dallas
Morning News reporting a 10.6 percent drop to 368,313.
The Dallas paper's corporate owner A.H. Belo Corp., newly spun
out of broadcasting company Belo Corp., said as part of its
earnings statement Monday that the company was culling back on less
valuable circulation such as copies distributed through third
parties.
Other metro dailies also posted steep declines, including The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, down 8.5 percent to 326,907, and the
Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, down 6.7 percent to 321,984.
Declines at other major papers were less severe, with the New
York Daily News narrowly keeping the upper hand on its crosstown
tabloid rival, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post. The Daily News
posted a 2.1 percent decline to 703,137, while the Post fell 3.1
percent to 702,488.
Both Murdoch and Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman are going
after Tribune Co.'s Newsday on neighboring Long Island. Newsday,
meanwhile, posted a 4.7 percent decline in circulation to 379,613.
The twice-yearly report from the Audit Bureau includes figures
from most major U.S. newspapers but not the entire industry. At the
nearly 550 papers that reported comparable figures for both
periords, average daily circulation fell 3.6 percent in the most
recent period.
Several smaller to mid-size papers posted gains, including a
Spanish-language daily in New York called El Diario La Prensa, up
7.6 percent to 53,856, while The Times in Munster, Ind., owned by
Lee Enterprises Inc., rose 3 percent to 86.195.
The Chicago Sun-Times, reporting for the first time since being
censured in 2004 for circulation misstatements, posted circulation
of 312,274, but no prior-year numbers were available for
comparison.