Newspaper Circulation Falling Rapidly

There has been an ongoing discussion over the last couple of years over whether newspapers can survive in the age of television and the internet. More and more people are said to be getting their news from television and the huge number of internet sources. New figures show that the circulation numbers of newspapers are still falling.

This is very bad news for the papers. The lower the circulation is, the less they can charge for advertisements and the less ads they can sell. These ads are the life-blood of a newspaper. The charge to the consumer barely covers the distribution cost for most newspapers. The other costs (such as salaries) and profit are covered by advertising sales.

New figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulation shows that the average drop in newspaper circulation (in April-September from the same span last year) was 10.6%. Making matters even worse, it looks like the circulation drop is increasing with each six-month reporting period. The drop for October 2008-March 2009 was 7.1%, and the drop for April-September 2008 was 4.6%.

It is increasingly looking like newspapers are the news media of the past, and will not survive long in the 21st century. There are still those consumers who like getting a print version of the newspaper, but there probably are not enough of them to keep newspapers viable in this era of multiple news sources.

The question now is can these newspapers make themselves viable enough on the internet to survive as a news organization. Some papers are considering charging consumers for their online version, but I don't think that's going to work. All that will do is depress their online viewership, which will in turn depress their ad revenue. There are just too many news sources on the internet that are free (not to mention free television).

If these newspapers are going to survive as news-gathering organizations and stay viable, they will have to do it with advertising revenue (and that's not easy on-line). The question now is not whether the print version of newspapers will die. That is pretty certain at this point. The real question is whether these organizations can remain viable and profitable in their move to the internet. The answer to that question is still unknown.

For your edification, here is how the top 25 newspapers are doing with their weekday circulation figures:

Wall Street Journal -- 2,024,269 -- up 0.6%

USA Today -- 1,900,116 -- down 17.2%

New York Times -- 927,851 -- down 7.3%

Los Angeles Times -- 657,467 -- down 11.1%

Washington Post -- 582,844 -- down 6.4%

New York Daily News -- 544,167 -- down 14.0%

New York Post -- 508,042 -- down 18.8%

Chicago Tribune -- 465,892 -- down 9.7%

Houston Chronicle -- 384,419 -- down 14.2%

Philadelphia Inquirer -- 361,480 -- no % available

Newsday (Long Island) -- 357,124 -- down 5.4%

Denver Post -- 340,949 -- down 9.2%

Arizona Republic -- 316,874 -- down 12.3%

Minneapolis Star-Tribune -- 304,543 -- down 5.5%

Chicago Sun-Times -- 275,641 -- down 12.0%

Cleveland Plain Dealer -- 271,180 -- down 11.2%

Detroit Free Press -- 269,729 -- down 9.6%

Boston Globe -- 264,105 -- down 18.5%

Dallas Morning News -- 263,810 -- down 22.2%

Seattle Times -- 263,588 -- no % available

San Francisco Chronicle -- 251,782 -- down 25.8%

Portland Oregonian -- 249,163 -- down 12.1%

Newark Star-Ledger -- 246,006 -- down 22.2%

San Diego Union Tribune -- 242,705 -- down 10.1%

St. Petersburg Times -- 240,147 -- down 10.7%

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Seattle Times figures were not comparable to the prior year because they both merged with another paper and took over their subscriptions, but both showed declining Sunday figures. For Sunday figures for all papers please click here.