• by Erik Sass  @eriksass1, September 14, 2009

Beset by a sharp downturn in ad revenue, newspaper publishers are increasingly turning to circulation revenue to shore up their bottom line, raising newsstand prices and subscription fees for their shrinking print readership.

In fact, circulation revenues have become a surprisingly large piece of the pie for leading newspaper publishers.

On Monday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution raised its newsstand price by 25 cents to $1, for the Monday-Saturday daily editions. However, the Sunday edition price remained at $2. The move comes a little less than two months after AJC publisher Cox Media Group named Michael Joseph the new publisher of the newspaper.

Separately, in a memo to New York Times staffers, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and president Janet Robinson revealed that "in the second quarter of this year, advertising totaled 54 percent of our revenues and circulation was 39 percent," according to Editor & Publisher. That's a big percentage increase from five years ago, when "advertising accounted for 67 percent of our total revenues and circulation made up 27 percent."

It's worth noting, however, that the increase in the proportion of the bottom line coming from circ is due at as much to the precipitous decline in overall revenues as the increase in circ revenues.

In the first half of 2009, total circulation revenues came in slightly over $456 million, just 3.6% higher than 2004's circulation revenues of $440 million. Over the same period, total revenues fell from roughly $1.6 billion in the first half of 2004 to roughly $1.2 billion in the first half of 2009 -- a 25% decrease.

The most recent measure to increase circ revenue came in May, when the paper hiked newsstand prices from $1.50 to $2.00 Monday through Saturday and from $5 to $6 for the Sunday edition.

In August 2008 the Times raised its newsstand price by 25 cents, from $1.25 to $1.50, along with a 4.5% increase in the home delivery price. The last newsstand hike before this one, from $1 to $1.25, came in July 2007.

Last summer, The Wall Street Journal also raised its price by 50 cents to $2, following an increase from $1 to $1.50 in July 2007. Before the 2007 increase, the Journal had no price increases since April 2001. Around the same time, the Chicago Tribune raised the newsstand price of its Sunday edition 20 cents to $1.99 in the Chicago metro area.