The Audit Bureau of Circulations has released the numbers for the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. based on their weekday circulation numbers. Not surprisingly, the numbers are bad — okay, awful. Exactly one of the top newspapers has shown growth when compared to where they were 6 months ago. That paper is The Wall Street Journal, which is now the number one paper in the country thanks to USA Today’s staggering loss of nearly 20% of its readership the past 6 months.
And it’s not like WSJ is growing like gangbusters, it grew 0.61% in the last six months.
Also a good list is the top 10 gainers in circulation, only because it looks like they could barely find 10 papers in the entire country with positive gains. Almost all of the ones on this list are smaller papers, with Women’s Wear Daily coming in as the number two gainer over the timeframe.
Below, find a chart of top 10 circulated paper’s “growth” over the past 6 months. Below that find the raw data for the Top 25 papers.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — 2,024,269 — 0.61%
USA TODAY — 1,900,116 — (-17.15%)
THE NEW YORK TIMES — 927,851 — (-7.28%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES — 657,467 — (-11.05%)
THE WASHINGTON POST — 582,844 — (-6.40%)
DAILY NEWS (NEW YORK) — 544,167 — (-13.98%)
NEW YORK POST — 508,042 — (-18.77%)
CHICAGO TRIBUNE — 465,892 — (-9.72%)
HOUSTON CHRONICLE — 384,419 — (-14.24%)
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER — 361,480 — N/A
NEWSDAY — 357,124 — (-5.40%)
THE DENVER POST — 340,949 — N/A
THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC — 316,874 — (-12.30%)
STAR TRIBUNE, MINNEAPOLIS — 304,543 — (-5.53%)
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES — 275,641 — (-11.98%)
The PLAIN DEALER, CLEVELAND — 271,180 — (-11.24%)
DETROIT FREE PRESS (e) — 269,729 — (-9.56%)
THE BOSTON GLOBE — 264,105 — (-18.48%)
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS — 263,810 — (-22.16%)
THE SEATTLE TIMES — 263,588 — N/A
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE — 251,782 — (-25.82%)
THE OREGONIAN — 249,163 — (-12.06%)
THE STAR-LEDGER, NEWARK — 246,006 — (-22.22%)
SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE — 242,705 — (-10.05%)
ST. PETERSBURG (FLA.) TIMES — 240,147 — (-10.70%)
You can already hear the wave of accusations…
*new
Quite frankly, the WSJ is the only paper actually worth reading.
Their business oriented financial analysis is spot on, which is something no blog can offer.
Unlike all the other papers, the WSJ actually “prepares” you for the day’s events, versus reporting day-old news.
WSJ is growing because it’s conservative. Same as Fox News.
They’re the ONLY major voice of the right.
Ann Coulter 2012!
Of course, when surveys suggest that FOX News viewers are actually less informed than others, one has to question the value. Perhaps no paper is better than and empty shell of opinion.
That is why I read the Economist. It is at least conservative without the “right” label that sends a chill down the spine.
i read everything online anyways and wwd is a great website. i don’t read wsj (hardly ever), i don’t buy newspapers anymore. i read the free papers i get enroute to the subway, but mostly i find i’m either online or i’m watching information. sucks for paper. i still buy books though. i can’t help that part. if i could read all the books i bought online and i didn’t have to go through the hassle of paying online and figuring out if my information is really secure, i would be buying everything online.
thanks for the post mg.
WSJ is still a great paper. That said, the Internet will in time kill the printed periodicals, and the smart phone will make it happen that much quicker. Clearly these media companies need to downsize on the old distribution model quickly, be savvy online and create great content. The aggregation sites probably need to pay a little more for what they are currently stealing.
I am all for the media changing. The more worrisome aspect is journalism dying. At let’s not even start with blogging being the new journalism.
whats wrong with “blogging being the new journalism” when we have such insightful people like MG writting blog posts.
um thanks, if you’re serious.
I assure you, that was not a compliment.
The problem is that you have organizations that require the old physical product revenues to continue functioning. It will only be a matter of time before physical papers are killed off, but in a country that continues to debate healthcare, when do you suppose we’ll get around to giving children laptops for education like the great industrial power that is Uruguay? Let’s keep talking!
Sadly, it isn’t only newspapers that will be adjusting to new realities.
I immediately thought of this clip from the Daily Show when I read the headline.
http://www.thed...-2009/end-times
Hilarious!!!!
the dude’s face after the last joke , priceless
Might be helpful to put the web numbers up with the paper circulation numbers. See how well these brands are keeping an audience as they kill fewer trees.
Metro US which prints ins Boston, Philadelphia, and New York was not included here. It has a circulation of about 560K and actually seen continuous growth.
Probably wasn’t considered as it is a free daily.
Makes sense to me at a fundamental level. As I’ve adopted social networking and become better at following the industry and personal contacts that are most relevant to me, the news I care about is finding me through my own social graph rather than me having to search for it. For me, this change in behavior has gone beyond newspapers and is extending to dropping use of Google News and other “news searching” tools.
I’d be very interested in seeing the usage numbers for online news sources to see if they are flat to dropping as well.
I still say that newspapers need to use the online world as a knowledge archive and use newspapers as a way of sorting it all out. The Wall Street Journal seems to actually do some of that. As for the others… the really need to step up their game and stop treating their online sites like a reflection of what they do in a newspaper.
Online is for data and info collection as well as a knowledge base for research. The physical newspaper is to sort it all out, show you what you may have missed and highlight important information
AND lets not get into the whole liberal/conservative bias thing. There are too man papers ad organizations who want to tell us what the news is instead of asking hard questions and reporting their finding without any bias. They are loosing readership and viewership because they stopped informing us of what is going on. Right now they tell us what is going on instead of informing us.
The quicker they streamline their operations and move them entirely online the quicker they will stop being compared to other failing papers. It’s a no brainer for so many good reasons, like not having to print papers for starters.
We will see a quicker death with the onset and growing popularity of tablets. Why read a paper when you can not only read it on a tablet but click the links? It benifits all of us, even the advertisers and in a way that is potentially more effective/less irritating. So many wins here for the first paper to actually start thinking ahead.
*benefit
But the only reason they’re able to be online now is because the profits from the printed newspaper subsidizes the online editions. Revenue from display ads on smartphones doesn’t come remotely close to covering the cost of producing news. So if the printed newspaper dies – and no revenue substitute can be found – then news on the smartphone will die also.
True and without the major newspapers reporting the news, where will the bloggers find their stories?
Somewhat ironic because WSJ is the only one of these doesn’t have an open door to free content. Yes, you can find it through Digg and Google news and other places. But you can’t go to wsj.com and read all the content for free. Unless you’re prepared to do some major surfing, you have to buy the newspaper to get most of the content in one place (or pay for wsj.com)
Wonder how much of it is iPhone readership? WSJ’s iPhone app is amongst the best.
you must be kidding. their iphone app is awful.
I have a whole page on springboard dedicated to news apps (usa today, AP, Thomson Reuters, Newser, Tweetie 2, Byline, BNO News, NPR News & Business Weekly). WSJ app is not on that page, which says a lot.
Their website, however, is awesome. And yes, I do have a subscription (well, my dad does and I leach off it).
Either way, aren’t these numbers based off of *print* circulation numbers?
Truth hurts. But let’s face it… ” Print Media is dead”!
i couldn’t have said it better myself.
Ya print media is seeing its days. Its much faster, and friendlier for the environment to read it online. While I do read the newspaper its the one I get 3 times a week that is free and everyone gets.
WSJ is most likely including paid online readers. They added thes to their official count 6 yrs ago.
Nobody reads WSJ anyway.
People buy it to impress others, far less understand its contents.
Lets be honest.
MG – I wanted to get these over to you before your post, but couldn’t make the time. I thought the raw data was hard to understand without some visual representation. I saw you took a stab at one of the charts. Here’s some more in case you were interested: http://blog.new...cred.com/?p=206
Well they raise the price of the paper yet almost all have their articles free online, what do they expect to happen to paid circulation?? It’s not like the articles are being copied on file sharing networks, they put for all to see on their own sites.
HA HA HA!
DIE you antiquated fish wrap!
I’ve noticed that the best journalists are still employed, and reaching wider and wider audiences. It’s hard to shed tears for the rest of the mediocre ones.
Just did a quick look up about how the online versions of USA Today, NYT and WSJ were doing and as I was suspecting earlier, found out that they are almost on par with each other in unique visitors and USAToday registering the most increase in monthly terms
http://siteanal...v&months=12
The message is clear for these newspapers – make their content open, inform the public vs. telling their own versions, and let the public participate.
Social news – is the future!
The Newspaper industry will change and become a strong force again. It will take time to correct. I read a recent article of Maxim focusing on digital subscriptions via the internet and cell. I believe if the newspapers concentrate on the digital platform they will come out on top. They will save on paper and push on subscriptions and prove cash positive. There are so many opportunities for the newspaper industry. they need to just see it.
when there are thousands of blogs that have a great content and are FREE.. ( like TC ) It’s no surprise to me that the newspapers are hurting.. no one wants to pay for news anymore. at least the young ones that are smart enough to know that you can get the same info for free.. I bet most of those people still reading newspapers are over the age of 50.. with things like RSS and email out there you don’t need newspapers anymore..
besides if they shut down. we dont need to keep cutting down our forests to keep the presses running..
I do believe..the public is tired of hearing what the press believes we should hear, what the gov’t allows them to say….the news is no longer unbiased, it is opionated rubbish. I have to laugh..when you ask or think the loss of newspaper readers has deminished solely because of the internet. This country is in a disparity between leftists and rightist..the left is now controlling the news media..so those on the right maybe 50 to 60% of the old newpaper readers have lost interest…I won’t buy propaganda.
Interesting. These numbers should be directly related to increase in online readership. Can somebody provide relationship between online readership and newspaper readership?
Such analysis will be helpful for online news marketers to leverage upon conventional news distribution channel.