US: not all bad news from latest ABC figures

Posted by John Burke on May 10, 2006 at 9:54 AM

The latest circulation numbers for 770 American dailies follow the downward trend seen during the last major audits in May and November 2005, losing 2.5% overall. Big regionals such as the Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe were the hardest hit. But some 182 papers showed gains.

Stats found at Editor & Publisher and Media Post highlight some of the positive news:

The Bulletin of Bend, Oregon: 7.4%
The News & Observer of Raleigh, NC: 1.1%
Chicago Tribune: 0.9%

USA Today and the New York Times also posted small gains although NYT's NYC audience continued to slump.

Media Post also notes that 2 to 6 readers scan every paid newspaper, which should make advertisers happy.

As for online, despite the Newspaper Association of America trumpeting the popularity of newspaper websites, readers are still not spending enough time to impress advertisers. Analyst Ken Doctor pointed out that the most popular news site is still Yahoo News, on which users spend about 30 minutes a month, whereas they spend less than 15 a month with their favorite newspaper site. This shows the allure of news aggregators with which some publishers are trying to strike deals.

Also, Merrill Lynch newspaper industry analyst Lauren Rich Fine was even shocked at the overall 2.5% drop. As of the last audit in November, she had predicted an improvement in the statistics just released.

Sources: Media Post, Editor & Publisher, Newspaper Association of America

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