In Improving Economy, Papers Can't Shake Circ Doldrums

Even as advertisers return with gusto to newspapers, circulation continues to be a lagging economic indicator.

Fully half of the nation's largest 38 newspapers reported weekday circulation declines, according to an analysis by the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) of the latest FAS-FAX numbers released this afternoon by the Audit Bureau of Circulations for the six-month period ending March 2004.

NAA President and CEO John Sturm noted that eight of the 12 biggest newspapers showed an overall daily circulation gain of 3.2%. But throw away the huge year-over-year gains by just two papers, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, and the picture emerges of metros that are flat at best.

Average daily circulation of the 836 newspapers reporting to the ABC declined 0.1%, according to an analysis by the NAA. The NAA reported that only 37 percent of those newspapers reported circulation gains in the period.

For the second consecutive reporting period, The Wall Street Journal (Click for QuikCap) posted an extraordinary circulation gain because it added to its total nearly 300,000 online subscribers who were not counted a year ago. The Journal's total circulation, which jumped 15.4% to 2,101,017, includes 295,162 individual online subscriptions that qualify as paid circulation under ABC rules, said Dow Jones & Co. spokesperson Nicole Pyhel. Those newly counted subscriptions accounted for more than the Journal's overall year-to-year gain of 280,417.

Similarly, the Post managed nearly double-digit growth -- up 9% to 678,012 -- that reflects its single-copy price of a quarter, compared to 50 cents for the competing tabloid Daily News.

But most of the gainers picked up only a little, while many losers lost a lot.

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday of Melville, N.Y., and the Houston Chronicle, for example, were up a half of one percentage point or less.

The Washington Post was clearly the highest-profile circulation loser, dropping 23,814 copies, or 3% of its circulation, to 772,553. The San Francisco Chronicle failed to hold on to the big gains it rolled up while the rival San Francisco Examiner was floundering under the former ownership of the feckless Fang family. The Chron was off 2.6% to 501,135.

In Denver, former rivals The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, now business partners in a joint operating agreement, continued to shed the circulation they gained when they were selling a year's worth of home delivery for about the price of a haircut. Both papers slipped below the 300,000 mark. Their combined circulation of 572,201 is down a hair under 5% from a year ago.