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Newspaper Circ. Falls 10% in 1H09

Weekday newspaper circulation fell 10.6% in the first half of the year, while Sunday circulation has slipped 7.5%, compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

USA Today in particular was hit by a decrease in circulation, falling from nearly 2.3 million to 1.9 million, or 17.1%. The slump lost the paper its top spot, in terms of weekday circulation, to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal, for its part, rose 0.6% in circulation, to just over 2 million, reports The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal’s online subscriptions are counted in its total circulation.

The New York Times, the country’s third-largest daily, saw its weekday circ fall 7.3%, to about 928,000. Sunday circ at The Times is still by far the largest in the country, at 1.4 million. That number was down 2.7%.

The Los Angeles Times is the fourth largest newspaper, with a daily circulation of 657,467. That number is down 11.1% from a year ago. The Washington Post, the country’s fifth largest paper, has a daily circulation of 582,844, down 6.4% for the period, writes the Los Angeles Times.

The Denver Post and the Seattle Times both saw significant circulation gains after their competitors were shuttered.

The ongoing drop in newspaper circulation is due to a number of factors, including the migration of readers to the web and the fact that newspapers themselves are paring back distribution in less profitable subscriber areas.

Smaller papers continue to fare better than their big-city counterparts, partly due to the fact that local news is less readily available online. The Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., for example, saw its circulation fall by only 2.7%, to 61,925, while the Pasadena Star-News lost 5.3% of subscribers, or less than half the overall industry rate.

ZenithOptimedia’s revised projections for 2009 and 2010 predict that newspaper ad expenditure will continue to decline, and will be at 25% below its 2007 peak by 2011.