US: Local stories give tabloids edge

Posted by Allie Judson on November 2, 2006 at 3:18 PM

The numbers have been released and as expected newspaper circulation is down again. After the study confirming what newspapers hoped wasn’t true, experts must now decipher what this means and what needs to be done. One of the biggest surprises was the increase in tabloid circulation for both The New York Post and The New York Daily News.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation reported that The New York Post’s circulation increased 5% and The New York Daily saw a 1% gain in the last 6 months. Experts are now questioning what these tabloids have that other newspapers lack? The answer: local coverage. Tabloids are focusing more on the news that can’t be found anywhere else. National news can be easily replaced by Internet news, but local stories keep reader’s attention.

The main problem affecting newspaper companies is their adaptability to their changing demographic and market. Now that more people are surfing the Internet, newspapers need to offer something different. A quarter of high-school educated Americans do not get any news on a daily basis. Newspapers need to step up and get their attention if they want to stop their decline any time soon.

However there is a bright side: some expect for circulation figures to level out and hopefully stabilize by 2007. This is expected to happen after newspapers finish re-arranging budgets and cutting various non-money making programs.

Sources: Forbes, Editor & Publisher, Financial Times

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