Inquirer and Daily News to Post Slight Circulation Gains
Editor & Publisher reports today that the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News will be among the relatively few major newspapers with a circulation increase or a decrease of less than 1 percent — in the Inky’s case, both — when the industry releases new numbers come Monday.
What this means is that our local papers are outperforming their counterparts across the nation, which are expected to show an overall daily circ decrease of 2.5 percent and a Sunday drop of 3.5 percent over the latest six-month reporting period.
A highly placed source with knowledge of the audit figures says the Inquirer will show a gain of around 7,000 copies daily but a decline of more than 10,000 copies on Sundays. In the past the Inquirer has lost as many as 30,000 Sunday readers in a six-month period.
The Daily News will show a teensy increase in daily circ, under 1,000 copies. These figures will probably still provide an occasion for staff at the People Paper to crack open a bottle of champagne — or at least a Schlitz or two: The DN hasn’t reported any increase at all in nine years.
To put these figures in some perspective, the newspaper business has always been a numbers game. Show advertisers an increase in readership, and the job of selling them an ad gets a whole lot easier. So however Philadelphia Media Holdings CEO Brian P. Tierney is playing the game, he seems to be playing it a lot better than his predecessors at Knight-Ridder. — Steve Volk
FAS-FAX Preview: Circ Declines, Some Steep, Continue [Editor & Publisher] 1
November 26th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Ah, that’s the reason I keep getting calls from the Inquirer, the last to ask me just to take the paper for “a couple of days”!