Newspaper Circ Plummets 2.6 Percent

Down 4.3 percent

The semi-annual report on paid newspaper circulation showed a 2.6 percent top-line decline in paying weekday readers among 786 papers across the country, AdAge reports. That represents a loss of nearly 1.2 million readers, but the New York Times and USA Today both posted slight gains.

Gannett’s USA Today reported 1,882 more paid readers of its Monday-Thursday edition, for a total weekday circulation of 2,222,745, the highest weekday circulation of any paper. The New York Times reported an average increase of 5,133 paying weekday readers, for a total of 1,126,190.

But declines were more the norm: the Wall Street Journal, the nation’s second-largest paper, saw a weekday circulation loss of 1.1 percent. The San Francisco Chronicle fared the worst among large papers, falling an average of 15.7 percent for Monday and Tuesday editions, and 17 percent Wednesday through Saturday.

Two of Knight Ridder’s top papers also suffered, with the Philadelphia Inquirer down 3.3 percent and the Miami Herald down 4.3 percent. Knight Ridder has been under the gun lately as the company’s three largest shareholders have publicly pressed its board to sell.

The Newspaper Association of America’s obviously hoped to stem the tide of doom, stressing in its analysis of the report total readership numbers, and pointing out that the total combined audience of the top 50 papers was nearly three times as high as the circulation of those papers. However, most media buyers and advertisers consider total combined audience far less accurate than paid circulation.