Eleven Of Twenty-Five Largest US Newpapers Lost More Than 10% Of Circulation

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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At one point, three or four years ago, for a major metropolitan newspaper to lose 4% or 5% of it daily circulation would have been considered bad news. For the six month period ending in March, ten of the top twenty-five largest dailies in the US lost over 10% of theirs, according to circulation audit firm The Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The circulation of The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (NWS) was down more than 20% to 558,140. It is the 7th largest newspaper in America.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution was down nearly as much 19.9% to 261,828. The numbers from the report include figures for Monday through Friday. The circulation at the troubled San Francisco Chronicle, which was nearly closed earlier this year, was down 15.72% to 312,118.

The Dallas Morning News, owned by AH Belo (AHC),  lost 9.88% of its circulation, dropping to 331,907. Circulation fell at the two large papers owned by The New York Times Company (NYT). At The Boston Globe the figure dropped 13.68% to 302,638. Circulation at the flagship New York Times was down only 3.55% to 1,039,031.

The Washington Post’s (WPO) circulation fell 1.16% to 665,383.

The circulation of the largest newspaper in the country, Gannett’s (GCI) USA Today was down 7.46% to 2,113,725.

The reason for the drop at many of the papers is that publishers are getting rid of subscribers who pay cut rates or live far from printing plants, making their papers more expensive to deliver. The action of letting these people go may save some money, but not nearly enough to offset falling advertising revenue.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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