Media Death Spiral: Newspaper Circulation Continues to Crater

The good news? Circulation is down around 5%. The bad news? It was even worse for the same period last year. But we figure the rate of decline has to slow since there are simply fewer readers. Sure to drive the left batshit crazy is the Wall Street Journal, owned by the evil Rupert Murdoch, is one of only two papers to have a circulation increase.

Circulation is still dropping at U.S. newspapers.

Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show average daily circulation fell 5 percent in the six months that ended Sept. 30, compared with the same period a year earlier.

The latest decline was not as steep as the 8.7 percent drop seen in the previous reporting period, which ran from October 2009 through March of this year.

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

Several trends factor in the decline. The growing popularity of free news on the Web is making newspaper subscriptions unnecessary for many readers. And publishers have been looking to offset losses in advertising revenue by raising newsstand and subscription prices. Some newspapers have reduced delivery to less profitable areas, figuring the cost of trucking newspapers far afield doesn't pay off in extra advertising dollars.

They never mention leftist bias as a factor, even though that certainly is a major reason.

Of the 25 biggest newspapers by circulation, only The Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp., and The Dallas Morning News, owned by A.H. Belo Corp., posted weekday gains. The Journal posted growth of 1.8 percent, with average daily circulation of 2,061,142. The Morning News grew 0.25 percent to 264,459.

The bleak numbers are here. Note the New York Times, LA Times, Washington post, Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday, SF Chronicle, Newark Star-Ledger and the New York Daily News all dropped considerably. They all have one thing in common: They're lefty rags.