Newspaper Circulation Falls 3 pct, Audit Bureau Says
The circulation declines of American newspapers continued to accelerate over the spring and summer, as sales across the industry fell almost 3 percent compared with the year before, according to figures released today.
The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation.
Among the nation’s largest newspapers, only a handful held their own or registered slight increases in overall paid circulation for the period from April 1 to Sept. 30: USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle and The St. Petersburg Times. Most papers showed significant declines, both weekday and Sunday.
For the first time, the Audit Bureau released, along with the traditional circulation figures, numbers produced by Scarborough Reports that reflected the total number of readers, both in print and online, for more than 200 newspapers in their home markets. For many of those papers, this marks the first time that such an independent analysis has been done, providing a benchmark for future reports.
Newspaper industry executives said they hoped that the new set of numbers would put a more positive cast on newspapers’ prospects than the routinely gloomy paid circulation reports have done.
An analysis of 88 major papers showed that in the last two years, about half of them had seen no change in readership or had registered an increase, said Bob Cohen, president and chief executive officer of Scarborough.
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