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US newspapers suffer from circulation fall

US newspapers suffer from circulation fall
By Joshua Chaffin in New York
FT.com
Updated: 10:12 p.m. ET Nov. 7, 2005

US newspapers' average daily circulation fell 2.6 per cent during the last six-month period ending September, a newspaper trade group said, marking one of the worst declines in the last 20 years.

The drop in Sunday edition sales was even more dramatic, at 3.1 per cent, according to information reported to the Audit Bureau of Circulation and released on Monday by the Newspaper Association of America.

The latest figures follow a 1.9 per cent decline in weekday circulation and 2.5 per cent drop in Sunday sales for the six-month period ending in March, and suggest that readers' migration from newspapers to other forms of media, particularly the internet, has accelerated.

NAA officials sought to counter the gloom of the headline numbers on Monday by arguing newspapers' total readership and audience had increased when taking into account their websites as well as special neighbourhood and ethnic publications. "The important issue here is that the audience that is coming to information from the newspaper brand is growing," said John Kimball, senior vice-president at the NAA.

The most dramatic decline came at the San Francisco Chronicle, where average daily circulation fell 16.4 per cent to just over 400,000.

The erosion at the largest US papers was more modest, with USA Today suffering a 0.5 per cent drop to 2.29m and The Wall Street Journal a 1.1 per cent fall to 2.08m. The New York Times, meanwhile, posted a modest 0.5 per cent gain to 1.12m.

US newspapers have only posted one full-year gain in average daily circulation over the last 20 years. The latest decline in readers comes as papers have been grappling with a rise in newsprint costs.


LINK: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9959065/