More Readers Trading Newspapers for Web Sites - New York Times

THE circulation declines of American newspapers continued over the spring and summer, as sales across the industry fell almost 3 percent compared with the year before, according to figures released yesterday. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image The drop, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, reflects the growing shift of readers to the Internet, where newspaper readership has climbed, and also a strategy by many major papers to shed unprofitable or marginally profitable print circulation.

Among the nation's largest newspapers, only a handful held their own or registered slight increases in overall paid circulation for the period from April 1 to Sept. 30: USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Houston Chronicle and The St. Petersburg Times. Most papers showed significant declines, both weekday and Sunday.

For the first time, the audit bureau released, along with the traditional circulation figures, numbers produced by Scarborough Reports that reflected the total number of readers, both in print and online, for more than 200 newspapers in their home markets. For many of those papers, this marks the first time that such an independent analysis has been done, providing a benchmark for future reports.

Industry executives said they hoped the new numbers would put a more positive cast on newspapers' prospects than the routinely gloomy paid circulation reports have done. "We do feel that there's a story that's been missed here," said Stephen P. Hills, president and general manager of The Washington Post. There is good news about readership, he said, "but you wouldn't know that to read the newspapers."  

An analysis of 88 major papers showed that in the last two years, about half had seen no significant change in combined print and online readership, or showed an increase, said Bob Cohen, president and chief executive officer of Scarborough.

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But advertisers have generally not considered an online reader to be as valuable as a print reader, so it remains to be seen what effect the numbers will have. The audit bureau report showed a 2.6 percent decline in paid weekday circulation from the year-earlier period for more than 500 newspapers whose figures were available, and a 4.6 percent drop on Sundays for more than 600 newspapers.

USA Today, the top-selling weekday newspaper in the country -- it does not publish on weekends -- had a 1 percent increase in circulation, to about 2.3 million. Sales of The Wall Street Journal, which does not publish on Sundays, fell 1.5 percent, to about 2 million. The Journal charges for access to most of its Web site, and the paper said yesterday that online subscriptions, which are included in the paid circulation figures, had topped 1 million.

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