Newspaper circulation was down again, reported Editor & Publisher in a jumble of numbers:

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007. Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation, only four showed gains.

For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394…Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428. Daily circulation at The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same, 6.5% to 548,906.

The Wall Street Journal was down 1.53% to 2,011,882 daily but USA Today posted a gain of 1% to 2,293,137. The New York Post slipped this period with daily circ down 5.2% to 667,119 and Sunday fell 5% to 405,486. New York’s Daily News also showed declines in daily circ down 1.7% to 681,415 while Sunday decreased 6.8% to 726,305.

At the Chicago Tribune, daily circulation slipped 2.9% to 559,404 and Sunday fell 2% to 917,868. Its sister publication, the Los Angeles Times, grew slightly up 0.5% to 779,682, while Sunday fell 5.1% to 1,112,165. Daily and Sunday circulation at the San Francisco Chronicle has stabilized, down 2.9% to 365,234 and 0.6% to 430,115, respectively. Both The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News experienced deep declines — more than 10%.

NYT daily circulation is 1,037,828. When we first looked a these numbers, from 1993, the daily circulation was 1,185,000 — and the paper had far more limited national distribution at that time. Sunday circulation is now 1,500,394 and in 1993 it was 19% higher at 1,785,000 — again with much greater national distribution today than 14 years ago.

As usual in the issue of circulation, we will have to wait and to dig to find some of the most interesting information. One indicator of the precipitous decline in the New York Times is its dismal circulation in its home market. The New York Times sold almost 2/3 of its papers at home in the early nineties, and now sells fewer than half of them in its backyard, where it is the number three paper. However, the declines in home market sales of the NYT are typically difficult to identify because of the rather murky way that the New York Times Company makes some of its financial disclosures.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 5th, 2007 at 11:27 am and is filed under General, MSM, business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.