• by Michael Shields , November 1, 2004

More than 70 percent of the newspapers measured by the Audit Bureau of Circulations lost circulation during the last six months, according the ABC FAS-FAX report released on Monday.

For the six-month period ending September 30, 560 of 841 daily newspapers lost circulation. Overall, the daily circulation for these papers slipped by 0.9 percent to a circulation of 47,711,751.

For newspapers that report Sunday editions, the average circulation for those 662 newspapers dropped 1.5 percent to 51,625,241.

Several major newspapers saw daily circulation declines, including the Washington Post (-3 percent daily), the San Francisco Chronicle (-20,804 on Sunday), The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post (-6 percent daily), the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the New York Daily News (-1.6 percent daily).

The news was not all bad however, as there were some major newspapers that saw circulation rise, including The New York Times (+.22 percent daily and Sunday), The Wall Street Journal (+.75 percent), the Miami Herald (+2,148 in daily circulation), The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (+14,162) daily, the Orlando Sentinel, and the New York Post (up over 34,000 daily).

"These new ABC figures are in range with what we expected," said John F. Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America. "Important as it is, circulation is just one component of the information advertisers use to evaluate media purchases. Advertisers have been and continue to be focused primarily on the value that they get from their media spend - the kind of value that our latest CMI report demonstrates."

The report that Sturm referred was used in an effort by the NAA to paint a brighter picture of the health of newspaper readership.

According to the NAA's Competitive Media Index data, derived from Scarborough Research data, 77.8 percent of adults 18 and over in the top 50 markets read the newspaper every week, translating to more than 115 million readers in those markets during the period from February 2003 to March 2004.

More than half of adults in the top 50 markets read the newspaper each weekday, according to the NAA, though that figure fell to 52.8 percent for the fall 2004 report versus 53.4 percent in the spring 2004 CMI. Sunday figures were down slightly as well, to 61.2 percent of adults in those markets from 62.0 percent reported in the spring.

The data also shows that 17 million adults in the top 50 markets use their online service to read a newspaper.

Top 10 Newspaper Markets For Adult Readership: Daily, Sunday

Daily 
1. Hartford/New Haven, Conn.:
62.7 percent 
2. Cleveland:                                 62.4 percent 
3. New York:                                  61.7 percent 
3. Pittsburgh:                                61.7
percent 
4. Boston:                                    61.4 percent 
5. Philadelphia:                              61.2 percent 
6. West Palm Beach:                           61.1 percent

7. Providence/New Bedford:                    59.9 percent 
8. Tampa/St. Petersburg/Sarasota:             59.4 percent 
9. New Orleans:                               59.3 percent 
10.
Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/York, Pa.:   58.7 percent 

Sunday 
1. Cleveland:                                 74.4 percent 
2. Tampa/St. Petersburg/Sarasota:             72.3 percent

3. West Palm Beach, Fla.:                     72.2 percent 
4. Providence/New Bedford:                    72.0 percent 
5. Pittsburgh:                                70.5 percent 
6.
Hartford/New Haven, Conn.:                 70.1 percent 
7. Buffalo:                                   68.8 percent 
8. Philadelphia:                              68.7 percent 
9. Milwaukee:
68.5 percent 
10. Norfolk/Portsmouth/Newport News, Va.:     67.0 percent 

Source: Newspaper Association of America, daily readership.