Posted Apr. 29, 2008
The Boston Globe and Boston Herald posted significant circulation declines for the six-month period that ended in March, as did most major newspapers nationwide.
The Globe's average weekday circulation fell to 350,605, down from 382,503, or 8.3 percent. Sunday circulation fell 6.5 percent to 525,959.
The Herald's average daily circulation dropped 9.5 percent to 182,350, while its Sunday circulation fell 4.7 percent to 105,629.
Newspaper circulation has been declining since the 1980s, but the pace has picked up in recent years as more people go to the Internet for news, information, and entertainment.
Susan Hunt Stevens, the Globe's senior vice president of circulation and marketing, said the paper has "tightened up its promotional discounts" and "really gotten out of the business of selling copies at less than 50 percent of the cover price. We're not just giving away the paper like we used to."
"What I find invigorating is more people are getting their news from The Boston Globe than they were 10 years ago," she added. "They are just getting it both in print and online. That's transformative and challenging, but it's exciting."
A Herald spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.
With the exception of USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, which eked out gains of under 1 percent each, every other US daily newspaper in the top 20 posted declines for the six-month period ended in March, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
USA Today, owned by Gannett Co., remained the top-selling paper in the country, with average daily circulation of 2,284,219, up 0.3 percent. The Journal kept its number two spot at 2,069,463, up 0.4 percent. Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the Journal's parent company, Dow Jones & Co., in December.
The New York Times was still number three, at 1,077,256, but that was down 3.9 percent from the same period a year earlier. The New York Times Co. also owns The Boston Globe.
National newspapers like USA Today and the Journal have tended to hold their ground better, as have dailies in smaller markets, where competition from other media isn't usually as intense.
Metropolitan dailies have suffered the worst declines, a trend that continued in the most recent reporting period, with the Dallas Morning News reporting a 10.6 percent drop, to 368,313.
Declines at some other major papers were less severe, with the New York Daily News narrowly keeping the upper hand on its cross-town tabloid rival, Murdoch's New York Post.
The Daily News posted a 2.1 percent decline to 703,137, while the Post fell 3.1 percent to 702,488.
Both Murdoch and Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman are going after Newsday on neighboring Long Island, which Tribune Co. has decided to consider selling as it struggles with declining ad revenues and an $8.2 billion debt load it took on as part of a going-private transaction in December.
Newsday, meanwhile, posted a 4.7 percent decline in circulation to 379,613.
Despite the persistent declines in print circulation, newspapers have been attracting more readers to their websites, which, as many publishers point out, results in a larger total combined audience.
This month, the Newspaper Association of America released a study showing that newspaper websites attracted an average of about 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter, up about 12 percent over the same period a year earlier. Online advertising at newspapers grew 18.8 percent last year, but that wasn't enough to offset a 9.4 percent decline in print advertising. Total newspaper advertising last year, print and online, declined 7.9 percent.
