Posted on 05/08/2006 8:49:15 AM PDT by churchillbuff
The Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report released Monday morning reveals that circulation sank again this spring, with circ at major metros declining dramatically. Gains were slight.
Since March 2005, circulation has been declining at a more rapid pace. This spring, the numbers were expected to be better because of easier comparisons. Yet for the six-month period ending March 2006 compared to the same period a year ago, circulation at newspapers in major cities across the country continued to drop. Most notable so far: the San Francisco Chronicle, which experienced a dramatic 15% decline in daily copies, to 398,246.
Daily circulation at the Los Angeles Times dropped about 5.4% to 851,832. Sunday proved better for the paper, down 1.8%. The San Jose Mercury News, which McClatchy intends to buy, also showed decreases in daily circ, down 7.6% to 242,865.
The Washington Post reported that daily circulation slipped 3.6% to 724,242.
On the national front, USA Today reported slight gains -- despite a price increase last fall -- up .09% to 2,272,815. Daily circulation at The New York Times was up 0.5% to 1,142,464. The Wall Street Journal was down 1% to 2,049,768 for Monday through Friday.
As expected, daily circulation at The Boston Globe dropped 8.5% to 397,288. The paper experienced declines after releasing subscriber information in February.
The Sun in Baltimore also saw a significant decline. Daily circ sank 9.3% to 236,317 copies, while Sunday decreased 6.6% to 401,918.
The Philadelphia papers, which McClatchy put on the block after buying Knight Ridder, also showed declines. The Daily News was down 9.3% to 116,590 daily copies. Circuation at the Philadelphia Inquirer fell about 5% to 350,457. Sunday showed the same declines, down 5% to 705,965.
The Detroit Free Press reported an increase of 0.4% to 345,861, while the daily circ at the Detroit News dropped 1.5% to 214,934. Sunday was down 1.3% to 669,315.
Daily circulation at the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News declined -- both were down around 4.5%. Sunday declined about 4.1% to 704,806 copies.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer dropped 9% to 131,769 daily copies while the Seattle Times declined 5.3% to 220,734 daily copies. Sunday dropped 4.6% to 435,581.
Daily circulation at the Kansas City Star fell 5% to 261,776, while Sunday dropped 4% to 367,712. The Indianapolis Star slipped a bit, with daily circ down1.3% to 255,277. Sunday decreased 2.8% to 347,217.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch was down 1.7% to 277,842 daily copies. Sunday dropped 5% to 423,291. The Plain Dealer in Cleveland declined slighly, down 1.5% to 343,163 daily copies. Sunday dropped 2.7% to 450,875.
The Star Ledger in Newark, N.J. was one of the few major dailies to show gains. Daily was up 0.9% to 398,329 and Sunday was up 1.4% to 599,628.
In Florida, the Orlando Sentinel also dropped 8.2% to 229,368 daily copies. The Miami Herald was down 5.8% to 294,172.
Daily circulation at the Atlanta Journal Constitution decreased 6.7% to 365,011 and Sunday circ fell about 8% to 561,405. The Star Tribune in Minneapolis dropped 2.8% to 362,964 daily copies while Sunday dropped quite more, down 7.4% to 606,698.
The Chicago Tribune reported gains in both daily and Sunday up 0.9% and 0.3% respectively.
The gap is narrowing between rivals the New York Post, which reported daily circulation down 0.7% to 673,379. At the New York Daily News, daily circ dropped 3.6% to 708,477 copies.
Newsday reported circ numbers on this FAS-FAX, a first since it was mired in circulation problems that started in the summer of 2004. Daily circ was down at paper, 2.7% to 427,771. Sunday dropped 3.4% to 488,825.
Both the Chicago Sun-Times and The Dallas Morning News are not included on this report. The circ numbers are withheld pending the completion of a madatory six-month audit.
The Times-Picayune in New Orleans voluntarily suspended its service. Other Louisiana papers affected by hurricanes --The Advocate in Baton Rouge, the Courier in Houma, and the American Press in Lake Charles -- did not file by press time.
They're selling them at the McDonalds near my house, and sometimes I'll buy one.
Good - let these liberal rags sink.
Could be that people are less inclined to read than they once were. I wonder if literacy is declining or whether we are just happier with electronic media these days. Maybe a combination of the two things. I'm fairly sure that standards have been lowered at schools, but I also imagine that the studen population has increased.
"Thank you Lord for the blessing."
Daily circulation at The New York Times was up 0.5% to 1,142,464.
This saddens me to see more victims added to the liberal roster.
Watching the Boston Globe tank is one of my greater pleasures.
What they are doing is smoke and mirrors.
They get a large chunk of their business from hotels and motels. They sell them in bulk [at a cheaper rate] to the hotels for their guests.
Let me know who has revenue increasing.
Circulation probably includes all the free copies given away. It would be interesting to see numbers on paid subscriptions.
I find this hard to believe. They can't even tell the truth in their pages much less factcheck, so there's no reason I believe their surely phony and inflated ciruclation figures.
The NYT has been doing lots national advertising (I've seen many commercials here in Tucson, AZ). Perhaps that caused the 0.5% increase in circulation. Do the costs in advertising offset the gain in circulation? I doubt it...
Looks like Drudge's source. MSMWOES added.
I buy it because you don't know what the spin is going to be unless you follow the spinmeisters some of the time. For close to 40 years, I've never been able to figure out why consrvatives are neither as energetic nor effective as the left in getting out our side.
Kudos to the Globe for bolstering the case for McKinney as Democrat plantation poster girl.
Patrick Kennedy and Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia McKinney’s reaction to the obvious and blatant favoritism enjoyed by Patrick Kennedy is likely to be something to savor.
She is already on the record about the indignities she received at the hand of a white cop.
But now she sees that for the white boy, supervisors stepped in, relieving the officers at the scene and driving the staggering Kennedy home.
She faces potential legal jeopardy, and now a rich white boy walks away without so much as a breathalyzer test from circumstances that would ordinarily demand a drunk driving investigation.
I'm getting Slimes subscribtion offers again. I cancelled 4 years ago.
I think laptops are just a couple of generations away from replacing the giveaway newspapers in these areas. Unfortunately, it will be like the political parties. When the Republicans started winning, Rats changed to Republican, but didn't change their politics. All these newspaper Marxists will go online. The delivery method will change, but Molly Ivins wannabes will still be around.
"Watching the Boston Globe tank is one of my greater pleasures."
Thanks to the Globe, the DC Compost and NY Slimes, Ted Kennedy was able to remain as a $inator after the death of Mary Jo. He would have been removed as a $inator if the MSM hadn't spent millions and millions to save his sorry butt.
Without Kennedy as Kerry's mentor before and after Kerry served in Nam, the outcome of the war might have been different and many of the problems we face today.
The tanking of the Globus is celebrated by many of us.
"I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last week, and the newspaper was dropped at the door every morning. There was a note that said they'd drop 8 cents a night if you didn't want the paper, which tells me what they're paying per copy. I'd bet well over 50% of USA Today's circulation is to travellers who get it gratis. They're also frequently in restaurants, free for reading to patrons."
During the 2000 election someone on Free Republic posted the info that those USA Today's were not free. After that I told the desk clerks on check in, to put in the computer that I didn't want the USA TODAY and credit my account for the amount they paid. In 2000 it saved me about a nickel to a dime. I figured, the hotel/motel got the paper for free and then USA Yesterday paid the hotel/motel nickel to a dime to have the bell man or maids to put the newspaper down by the door.
I'd drop the Houston Comical in a minute if we didn't want to read the Death Notices.
Maybe they should publish every other day to cut costs.
Or just once a week.
The Comical has deaths and obits online: http://www.legacy.com/houstonchronicle/DeathNotices.asp
Hah---interesting. The wave of the future---targeted distribution, underwritten by advertisers.
Ah Ha! LOL!
"Hah---interesting. The wave of the future---targeted distribution, underwritten by advertisers."
This is apparently going on in certain areas. Last month I posted about younger relatives living in a cul de sac in a fast growing and new upscale area of Eastern Contra Costra county, getting direct mail with ads from local businesses and in particuliar the ones they shopped at.
The only people in this cul de sac who weren't getting these direct mail ads were the two subscribers to the Gay Rhonicle and or the Contra Costra Time. The two subscribers cancelled their subscriptions and asked local store managers to put them on their direct mailing lists. Now they are getting the same ads mailed to them as the others were getting.
This should scare the hell out anyone in the newspaper business. These advertisers are bypassing the fishwarps's biased editorials, the Doonesbury comics, the pre written rat letters to the editors and getting their ads to the homes of buyers.
I think some of the libs in Boston are buying the Times instead of the Globe. When my very liberal Bostonian brother visits us in New York, he often mentions articles that were in the Times. We no longer read the Times.
Life is good.
They'll probably email them if you want, too. That's what our local Brookshire's and Kroger do...
Your story and the one I posted is probably happening all over America.
It has to be scaring the hell out of the elites who control the Dinosaur Fish Wraps.
Any person who doesn't click on the link to read the story will get a "catchy" headline which gives the liberal slant on a news story.
It's disgusting.
I agree. It's likely that they are finally able to read the sign that tells them that the road they are driving on heads over a cliff.
Thanks for the idea.
They are too arrogant to recognize what is killing them, like poing 72 million voters for GW. Those POed voters don't subscribe nor buy these fish wraps. Nor do they buy ads to sell cars, boats and other personal items. That is a big double whammy against these vile Dinosaur Fishwraps.
I cancelled mine in 1998 when I moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. Two weeks ago I got a mailing from them begging me to come back to them at some dirt-cheap introductory rate. I'm holding off until they offer to pay me to receive it.
Not many, though. That 0.5% increase only amounts to 5,700 copies.
Our local Gannett rag now produces a special "junk mail" edition, which they force their paper boys to deliver on Saturdays, without pay, to every house on their route that doesn't subscribe to the paper. It contains all the circulars from the Sunday paper, wrapped around a very thin (maybe only four pages) editorial section that consists entirely of the most useless repurposed content from the previous week's real paper; you know, the police blotter, who's divorcing whom, filler material like that.
Not quite 50%, but close. I looked it up; 46% of USA Today's circulation is from "bulk sales", as of 2003. According to the circulation auditors, "In bulk sales, we included all papers listed outside of individually paid circulation, which includes hotel sales, educational copies and third party sales to such business as airlines and restaurants."
Thanks for the info. I'm surprised that many people pay for it.
Sheesh!! Their next step will be sending around questionnaires to make sure the non-subscribers are doing the required reading.
I would guess circulation is down because more and more people are discovering Charmin provides superior cleansing, is more puncture resistant and does not leave ink residue.
FWIW, the article lists the Miami Herald, which is published in both Spanish and English, among those papers suffering declines in circulation. But the Spanish language angle does make sense.
It may be increasing due to people not reading the paper. Have you read a "news" paper lately? The writing is terrible. Why read poorly-composed and poorly-edited articles slapped together under a short deadline when you can pick up a good book that was crafted by the author over a longer period?
I get a couple newspapers, the writing in the WSJ seems pretty good on the whole, though I think I'll look at this morning's copy with a more critical eye...OTOH, the Miami Herald can have some pretty sketchy writing. I suppose, that if literacy is decreasing, it only follows that the writing skills of newspaper journalists would lessen as well, in step with those of society in general. In any case, you are probably right, where the reading of newspapers once sharpened our literary skills, the opposite is now true.
They don't have to. The paperboys are also required to insert every freebie paper into bright green plastic wrappers before tossing them onto nonsubscribers' driveways. (The real newspaper never gets wrapped in anything except when there's a downpour, and then they only get plain clear wrappers.) Then about twelve hours later the circulation managers drive around their assigned neighborhoods and count the number of missing bright green wrappers.
Quite a system..
Yes, on second thought, I too am thinking that the decline would have to include the "immigrants," since our population is actually being grown by their presence, while newspaper readership simultaneously declines.
Miami's immigrant population, which is larger than the native population, has traditionally been Cuban, and quite well educated, I would say. OTOH, there are now folks here from all over the Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Haiti, Central and South America, and even Russia and Eastern Europe. But I think the ones who come here still tend to be the harder workers, and the ones with more education. The Mexicans are also hard workers, and they are here too, with probably a good bit less education than the others. In any case, the Spanish version of the Herald was originally aimed, I believe, at the Cuban population.
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