The Circulation Avalanche

The Audit Bureau of Circulations releases figures on year-over-year changes in newspaper circulation every six months, in March and September, and lately, they've been negative for most major daily papers. That's bad news. But there's worse news: If you look at the ABC numbers over several years, you begin to see the magnitude of the circulation decline—and the speed at which it's accelerating. What you see over time, in fact, is more than a decline: It's an avalanche.

For instance: Since 1996 the Los Angeles Times has lost nearly 25 percent of its daily circulation, falling to 775,766 daily copies in the September 2006 ABC report from 1,029,073 in September 1996. Most of that decline has come in the past five years: the drop since 2001 is 20.3 percent. And the pace has picked up in the past year: 8 percent since September 2005; 8.9 percent since March.

Want more? The San Francisco Chronicle's circulation is down 23.2 percent since 1996, with nearly one-third of that drop coming in the past year. The Philadelphia Inquirer is down 22.6 percent in the past 10 years, again with about one-third of that coming in the past year. The Boston Globe is down 18 percent since 1996, with almost 40 percent of that coming since last year. (Newsday's circulation is off a whopping 27.3 percent over 10 years and 25.7 percent over five—but because of the paper's recent circulation scandals, more recent comparisons aren't available. Odds are they aren't good, especially when the numbers are restated to account for the scandals.)

These declines reflect a stunning rejection of newspapers by their customers. The reasons are manifold: lackluster content, competition from the Internet and time pressure on readers are some of the obvious ones; anecdotally, you hear about people who just don't want papers piling up in their homes, which adds an ecological angle. More troublingly, most of these declines are coming in a fairly healthy economy, in local markets that generally are expanding, not contracting. The pie is getting bigger, but newspapers' slices of it are getting smaller.

There are some seasonal variations in the numbers that magnify the declines even further. In some cases, the March measurement periods tend to be a little stronger than September. So the Washington Post had lost 14 percent of its circulation between September 1996 and September 2005; gained some of it back over the winter (The Post aggressively markets the paper in the fall months to subscribers who only get the daily or Sunday editions)—and then lost 9.4 percent of its circulation between March and September of this year. Total loss over 10 years: 16.8 percent. (Revealing disclosure: I dropped my subscription to the daily Post three years ago, for all of the reasons listed above, and I don't miss it. I've even turned down several Post offers to get the daily paper for free. When you can't even give away your product, something's really wrong!)

At some papers, almost all of the decline has happened in the past few years. The Arizona Republic, whose circulation has grown overall since 1996, peaked a few years ago and has dropped sharply since—down 12 percent in the past five years, and down 9.4 percent from March to September. Circulation at the Newark Star-Ledger is down 6.8 percent over the past 10 years—but almost all of that came in the past year, according to ABC. Similarly, the Portland Oregoniam is down 8.2 percent in the past 10 years, and 11 percent in the past five years—with most of that coming in the past year.

The long-term circulation news is not all bad. The national newspapers (USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal) are all up over the past 10 years, though they, too, posted declines over the past year.

And then there's the New York Post, the only one of the non-national dailies in the Top 20 to post increases in circulation over the past 10 years (up almost 64 percent) and in the most recent year (up 4.5 percent). You can deride the Post's tabloid approach, but it sure seems to be working with audiences. Maybe there's something readers like about a punchy, tightly edited, entertaining paper. Hey, that's the ticket!

Take the three national papers and the Post out of the totals for the Top 20 and the magnitude of the overall decline jumps out: Together, the 16 biggest papers have lost 11.8 percent of their circulation since 1996 (12.3 percent since 2001), with more than one-third of the drop coming in the past year.

The newspaper industry, of course, spins these numbers; the Newspaper Association of America actually has tried to claim that newspaper readership is UP, when you count passalong copies and visits to Web sites. Uh-huh.

There are other analyses, as well. Alan Mutter has argued that some of the decline has been intentional, as papers have cut back expensive promotional and "vanity" circulation, but that can't be proved without detailed breakdowns of the circulation numbers, which ABC doesn't provide. Conversely, Rick Edmonds of the Poynter Institute suggests that papers are being more aggressive about discounts, which would tend to buoy circulation. And we don't know how the numbers break down between street sales and subscriptions, which would be interesting to see.

Nonetheless, that sound you hear is an avalanche of circulation, moving more quickly with each reporting period. And advertising are following readers out the door. Unless newspapers can figure out a way to reverse the trend, they face a grim future. When you're shedding circulation at 8 or 9 percent a year, it only takes a few years to get to zero.

Newspaper Circulation Trends, 1996-2006

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for six months ending in September of each year.

Comments

[edward allen]

I am joining you in abandoning the Washington Post, which a month ago cutback on its daily TV listings, and now is cutting back on its stock listings. If you look closely at the circulation report, there is one newspaper that has increased circulation substantially over the last decade _ the Wall Street Journal. Here's a plain vanilla newspaper with few graphics and no pretty color pictures on the front page to attract coins on the street. I buy it and the Financial Times because I know that I will get news for my money, not silly fluff and trend stories. But then I'm just one of those old farts living on a six-figure retirement income, with time to travel and grandchildren to spend on. But I'm not the sort of demographics today's newspapers want, so I've given up on the Post.

[rknil]

Newspapers' response to this is to keep cutting staff and hoping things will change. Nothing like making the product worse and believing that will lure back customers.

In 30 years or so, the failure of this industry will be a model for avoidance. Of course, the people guiding today's newspapers to ruin already have set up their golden parachutes, so it will hardly matter to them.

[Reporter]

Those damn reporters are responsible for the circulation decline, some apparently believe, and should be thinking about readership.
This is from the Wall Street Journal story last Friday on the L.A. Times shakeup:

"On Tuesday, Mr. Baquet announced he was leaving. His replacement, James O'Shea, a longtime editor at the Chicago Tribune, takes over from Mr. Baquet as editor of the L.A. Times on Monday. In an interview last week before his appointment was made public, he said reporters should be worrying more about readership than about cost cutting.
"The whole damn industry is focused on the wrong thing," he said. "We're all worried about how many people we have, and what we should really be worried about is declining readership."
At Mr. O'Shea's going-away party earlier this week, he got an ovation from the Chicago Tribune newsroom, say people who were there. They also gave him a gift: a plastic shield and body armor."

[jeff]

actually, papers have fewer readers than they dismally claim. today i went to my unpaid after-school advisor job...and thanks to newspapers in education, (nie) which i believe count as circulation, there was a stack of 28 unread (of 30-delivered) and still bundled san diego union-tribunes. this is a weekly occurence. i hope the advertisers are paying top dollar for this!

[shashank]

How can you totally disregard traffic to websites?? Sure, a lot fewer people are buying the print product, but that's an obvious result of the industry giving away its content for free online. All this focus on circulation misses the point - I haven't seen any good numbers to back this up, but I bet more people are reading newspaper stories today than ever before, because the Internet has made it free and easy to do so.

I consider myself an avid newspaper reader. When I lived in Los Angeles I read only one newspaper each day, and now that I live in Kenya I read that paper and 2-3 others. Newspaper content is more important, influential and widely consumed than ever before.

Newspaper companies have been dismally poor at capitalizing on this expanding audience - "monetizing" it, as they might say in business schools. That more than anything else is why the industry is seen as declining. Papers are trying to figure out how to do this, and some, like the New York Times with its model of charging for premium content, seem to be doing it well. That model might not work for many others. It's a time of growing pains, but I believe the best companies will figure it out.

The tragedy is that the quality of journalism at many places will probably suffer permanently from the retrenchment that the industry is going through right now.

[Mark Potts]

You raise a good question about traffic to Web sites, but it's basically apples and oranges. Print advertisers aren't paying for that traffic—they're paying for print circulation. Right now, the drastic cutbacks facing newspapers are the results of declining circulation and advertising on the print side; the growth on the online side really isn't a factor.

As you say, there still is a significant issue about monetizing online traffic. I believe that will take care of itself over the next few years as online advertising grows and becomes more sophisticated, and as more sites follow the NY Times model of charging for online subscriptions.

At some point, there will be a transition to seeing the online product as the primary editorial and advertising vehicle, but at most organizations, that transition hasn't even begun yet.

[George B.]

I bet the NY Post is the only major, large market newspaper with a pro-Republican, pro-Bush, pro-American military slant in its news and editorial pages.

Editors do not seem to realize that the old days of market oligarchy are over and readers now have other sources of news and information including cable, talk radio and the internet available to compare news stories. The MSM will not admit bias, and the public, with options to examine, are now able to select what they think is fair.

[Nameless]

At my kids' school last year, stacks of free papers from two competing top 100 daily newspapers were deposited outside the front doors where they remained for hours, typically, until the janitors or the wind carried them away.

And it wasn't just at one school. I spotted the same thing at a school where my wife works.

Part of the problem, I think -- unless you've got a great big sign saying "Free papers", people are afraid to just grab one, so they just go to waste. Papers shouldn't be allowed to just dump copies at schools unless someone there has agreed to take them and use them in some form or fashion.

The other problem -- even if people know they're free, a lot of folks wouldn't read the paper unless you paid them. No wonder circulation is falling.

[Joe]

The problem is newspapers are giving away their content online. What else did they expect would happen to their circulation?

I used to read papers all the time. Now I can just go online like the NY Times site and see the next day's articles at midnite. So why would you want to pay for the paper?