The Audit Bureau of Circulations recently released a report which explains daily newspapers experienced a 2.1% circulation decline. I’ve already started the countdown for the next uninformed blogger to scream “newspapers are dead.” Well, they are not…
A decline of 2.1% is certainly not good, but on the positive side:
However the average weekday decline of 2.1 percent in the latest period was not as steep as the fall of 2.8 percent reported for the six-month period ended in October, or the six months ended in March 2006, when the decline was 2.5 percent.
There is light at the end of the tunnel
If you look at the Top 20 list, you will see that the New York Post, USA Today, WSJ, New York Daily News, and several others experienced circulation growth. Additionally, if this report discussed smaller town and niche publications, readers would find these types of newspapers are still growing strongly.
Metropolitan Papers Will Continue to Experience the Most Decline in Circulation
Metropolitan papers are certainly in trouble. They face competition from online and offline sources. From local competition, to niche subject specialists, to online classifieds, to little value add on national/international issues, the outlook is bleak. If anyone has any ideas for this segment, we are all ears.
3 comments
Comments feed for this article
May 1, 2007 at 11:30 am
Beth Lawton
Speaking of bloggers weighing in… Over at the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Edge Web site, we have a list of recent essays, blog entries and articles from people proposing various ideas of what the newspaper industry needs to do to ensure a solid, profitable future. The list of essays from March and April are at http://www.digitaledge.org/blog/digitaledge/1/2007/04/How-to-Save-Newspapers-Round-3.cfm.
Separately, here’s our press release from yesterday on the latest circulation numbers and what they mean: http://www.naa.org/sitecore/content/Global/PressCenter/2007/SUBSCRIBER-RETENTION-UP.aspx?lg=naaorg
May 1, 2007 at 11:54 am
Kyle Redinger
Beth, thanks for the comment. I will check them out and write something about them.
December 17, 2007 at 12:42 pm
kayla
i think that there should be more people buying newspapers