Media Watch

Historic drop in newspaper circulation nationwide

Newspaper Circulation Falls Sharply Nationwide
On Sunday Boston Globe drops 10%, Cape Cod Times dr0ps 3%

According to a front page Business Section article in today's New York Times the circulation of the nation’s daily newspapers plunged during the latest reporting period in one of the sharpest declines in recent history, according to data released yesterday. The slide continues a decades-long trend and adds to the woes of a mature industry already struggling with layoffs and facing the potential sale of some of its flagships.

The figures appear to be the steepest in any comparable six-month period in at least 15 years. They come after the sale of the Knight Ridder newspapers this year and in the midst of a possible sale of the Tribune Company, whose assets include 11 newspapers. The circulation losses also follow recent sour earnings reports, raising questions about why anyone would want to buy a newspaper now.

The losses have accelerated as the industry tries to adjust to the steady migration of readers and advertisers to the Internet. This online newspaper which didn't exist a decade ago is now being read by over 250,000 individuals each month and growing at double digits monthly. Papers in major metropolitan areas, where more homes are wired for broadband, fared worse than those in smaller markets like the cape, but that will change as the world gets wired.

The most shocking numbers released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations today were:

• Average daily circulation dropped by almost 3% during the the most recent 6-month period compared with the same period last year.
• Sunday newspaper circulation fell by 3.4% nationwide.
• The Cape Cod Times was down 2% daily, 3% sunday.
  
• The Boston Globe average daily circulation declined 7% to 386,000 from 414,000 and on Sunday the drop was 10% from 652,146 to 587,292.
•  The Boston Herald fell 12%, to 203,000 from 230,000 and on Sunday 13%  from 115,214 to 131,833.
  
• MetroWest down 7%.
  
• Worcester Telegram & Gazette was down 11%.
• Patriot Ledger down 4%.
• Bockton Enterprise down 4%.
• Daily News Tribune down 6%.
  
• Daily News Transcript (Watham) down 17%.
  
• Springfield Republican down 3%. 
• The New York Times lost about 3.5% both daily and Sunday.
  
• The Washington Post’s declines were nearly the same.
  
• The Wall Street Journal’s daily paper fell by less than 2% (still not a happy result for Dow Jones), but its Weekend (Saturday) Edition was down 6.7%.
• The Philadelpia Inquirer which has bought last June by local businessmen, lost 7.6% of its daily circulation and 4.5% on Sunday.

Newspapers lose 20 million readers,  30%  in 20 years

As the last reporting period according to ABC, the total circulation for the nation’s dailies had dropped to 43.7 million compared with 63.3 million daily circulation in 1984.

That is 19,600,000 fewer readers than in 1984 while the nation's total population has grown by over 65 million more people during those 22 years. That means that today the "market share" of US consumers has fallen by nearly half in the last two decades (63M of  235M then vs. 43M of 300M today).

Big (wired) city tabloids do better

Perhaps the only bright spot for the nation's daily newspapers was scored by The New York Post, which finally passed its arch rival, The Daily News, by about 10,000 copies and trumpeted the news on a giant billboard in Times Square.

Read the MarketWatch report here.
Read the Globe report here.