The misleading circulation reports of the New York Times
Drudge is reporting this:
Average daily circulation of the nation’s 20 biggest newspapers for the six months ended March 31, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.
1. USA Today, 2,281,831, up 0.05 percent
2. The Wall Street Journal, 2,070,498, down 0.8 percent
3. The New York Times, 1,136,433, up 0.24 percent
4. Los Angeles Times, 907,997, down 6.5 percent
5. The Washington Post, 751,871, down 2.7 percent
6. New York Daily News, 735,536, down 1.5 percent
7. New York Post, 678,086, up 0.01 percent
8. Chicago Tribune, 573,744, down 6.6 percent
9. Houston Chronicle, 527,744, down 3.9 percent
10. San Francisco Chronicle, 468,739, down 6.1 percent
11. The Arizona Republic, 452,016, down 3.2 percent
12. The Boston Globe, 434,330, down 3.9 percent
13. The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 394,767, down 1.6 percent
14. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 391,373, down 2.4 percent
15. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 378,316, up 0.33 percent
16. The Philadelphia Inquirer, 364,974, down 3.0 percent
17. The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 348,416, down 5.2 percent
18. Detroit Free Press, 347,447, down 2.0 percent
19. St. Petersburg Times (Florida), 337,515, down 3.2 percent
20. The Oregonian, Portland, 335,980, down 1.8 percent
These figures are misleading for the NYT, because of its reporting national distribution. The NYT circulation has declined 22% in the last dozen years, and most recently, 26% in the 31 counties that comprise its home market.
Thus, while the figures are not apples-to-apples, the most recent home-market figures for the NYT as reported in their 10K shows a 4-5% decline, masked by the national distribution numbers that Drudge reports. We note that we will not have the NYT’s 2005 10K for eight months, but it is implausible that its home-market circulation has stopped eroding.