Newspaper circulation drive slows

Oct 25, 2010, 19:01 GMT

New York - Newspaper circulation in the United States dropped 5 per cent in the US in the six months ending in September, with The Wall Street Journal and the Dallas Morning News the only major dailies to actually increase paid circulation.

US newspapers have been struggling to staunch the migration of readers from paid print copies to free websites. The drop, while significant, was less than the 8.7-per-cent drop that the US newspaper industry had experienced in the previous six months, according to figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Sunday circulation fell 4.5 per cent in the April-September period, a smaller decline than the 6.5-per-cent drop in the six months before that.

The New York Times suffered a larger than average drop as its daily circulation fell 6 per cent to 877,000. Other major papers suffered steep declines, too. The Los Angeles Times fell by 8.7 per cent, the Washington Post by 6.4 per cent and the San Francisco Chronicle by 11.2 per cent.

The biggest drop among the major papers came at Newsday, which covers Long Island outside New York and suffered a fall of 11.8 per cent.

The Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp, is by far the country's biggest daily, with average circulation of just over 2 million, an increase of 1.8 per cent, including some 600,000 online subscriptions. The Journal is the only major US paper to charge for online subscriptions.

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