American Newspaper Circulations 2013

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Today we’re looking at American Newspapers Circulation which were released in the last few days. It’s not a USA centric thing, it’s more that the print sectors march towards digital there is evolving faster (in my opinion) than many of the countries in the world.

The Alliance for Audited Media (akin to the ABC here/UK) monitor a total of 593 newspapers across the States and they allow publishers to amalgamate both their paid copy sales and their digital unique or subscriptions so you can see the brand footprint of a title (neatly avoiding the word “newspaper”!).

The top 23 titles for March 2013 are in the table below and, without getting into data mining, I’ll run through a few takeaways.

  • The biggest brand is the Wall Street Journal having a total circulation of 2.3m. It’s biggest in the print league but second biggest in the digital table, topped for pole position by the New York Times.       
  • USA today dropped into third position, primarily on the back of a 12% decline in its Newspaper Sales.
  • The NYT has the highest digital proportion of total circulation at 61% and that’s behind a paywall.
  • The lowest digital footprint is the Arizona Republic at a paltry 2%
  • Of the twenty three titles under scrutiny the average decline in print was 4% and the average increase in digital was 24% giving an average total circulation increase of 4%.
  • This is up from 27% when the titles were last surveyed in September 2012.
  • It would have to be said that the top papers are the pioneers in digital. Out of the five hundred odd titles surveyed, the average digital proportion is only 19.3% of total circulation across all titles.
Newspaper Print Digital Total Print Digital Total P D T D%
2013  2012  +/- +/- +/-
Wall Street Journal 1,480,725 898,102 2,378,827 1,499,204 794,594 2,293,798 -1% 13% 4% 38%
New York Times 731,395 1,133,923 1,865,318 717,513 896,352 1,613,865 2% 27% 16% 61%
USA Today 1,424,406 249,900 1,674,306 1,627,526 86,307 1,713,833 -12% 190% -2% 15%
Los Angeles Times 432,873 177,720 610,593 454,498 151,577 606,075 -5% 17% 1% 29%
New York Daily News 360,459 155,706 516,165 383,835 146,605 530,440 -6% 6% -3% 30%
New York Post 299,950 200,571 500,521 344,755 178,113 522,868 -13% 13% -4% 40%
Washington Post 431,149 42,313 473,462 434,693 27,535 462,228 -1% 54% 2% 9%
Chicago Tribune 368,145 46,785 414,930 388,848 23,112 411,960 -5% 102% 1% 11%
Denver Post 213,830 192,805 406,635 226,118 176,446 402,564 -5% 9% 1% 47%
Newsday 265,782 111,962 377,744 278,369 114,620 392,989 -5% -2% -4% 30%
Newark Star-Ledger 180,271 160,507 340,778 184,474 127,430 311,904 -2% 26% 9% 47%
Houston Chronicle 231,233 102,341 333,574 234,483 91,331 325,814 -1% 12% 2% 31%
Cleveland Plain Dealer 216,122 95,483 311,605 219,509 73,630 293,139 -2% 30% 6% 31%
Minneapolis Star Tribune 227,694 73,651 301,345 234,475 65,802 300,277 -3% 12% 0% 24%
Arizona Republic 285,927 7,048 292,975 274,783 839 275,622 4% 740% 6% 2%
Chicago Sun-Times 184,801 77,660 262,461 192,360 70,932 263,292 -4% 9% 0% 30%
Tampa Bay Times 241,020 17,099 258,119 218,334 13,610 231,944 10% 26% 11% 7%
Dallas Morning News 190,613 65,912 256,525 192,345 64,788 257,133 -1% 2% 0% 26%
Philadelphia Inquirer 184,827 67,958 252,785 193,729 43,224 236,953 -5% 57% 7% 27%
Boston Globe 172,048 73,524 245,572 180,919 49,432 230,351 -5% 49% 7% 30%
Honolulu Star-Advertiser 125,726 68,993 194,719 125,722 29,932 155,654 0% 130% 25% 35%
Orange County Register 159,411 15,466 174,877 160,578 15,273 175,851 -1% 1% -1% 9%
Las Vegas Review-Journal 126,293 15,996 142,289 129,363 13,412 142,775 -2% 19% 0% 11%
Totals 8,534,700 4,051,425 12,586,125 8,896,433 3,254,896 12,151,329 -4% 24% 4% 32%