The Audit Bureau of Circulation has released circulation figures for the largest newspapers in the U.S. (see stories here), and the numbers are awful. The report covered six months through September, and in that time only USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, by far the largest circulating dailies in the country, showed a gain, each one posting a microscopic 0.01 percent.
Other tallies:
— The New York Times lost 3.6% circulation
— The Los Angeles Times lost 5.2%
— The Washington Post lost 1.9%
— The Chicago Tribune lost 7.7%
— The Houston Chronicle lost 11.7%
— The Philadelphia Inquirer lost 11.1%
— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution lost 13.6%
Part of the declines are intentional as newspaper offices have responded to advertisers who asked them to cease circulating to hotels and beyond target areas.
Some people might raise questions about newspaper circulation responding so readily to advertisers, though, and the cutbacks in circulation will have an effect on staffing. In fact, according to a story in The Wall Street Journal today, The Los Angeles Times is cutting 10 percent of its newsroom.
That means less investigative reporting, which is labor intensive and time consuming, and more reliance on fewer sources. It means that more people will get their news from Web sources instead of taking 20 minutes to pore through the paper copy each morning, the latter being a more edifying civic practice. Indeed, at a time of intense political discussion, with the campaigns displaying one remarkable turn after another all spring and summer, it is astonishing that newspapers should undergo such a plummet, which was nearly double the decline from last year.
Given the role of newspapers in the social and political fabric of the U.S. from before the Revolution onward, not just journalists and editors but teachers, librarians, community figures, and other guardians of civic life should heed the trend.
(Photo from Flickr user Pingu1963)
