Monday, September 12, 2011

The top paper with most circ loss since 2005 is...

. . . The Journal News in Westchester, N.Y., where morning circulation plunged 38% over the last six years, according to a review of Gannett's annual reports.

The following table shows the 10 largest GCI community newspapers in 2005, and their weekday circulation at the end of 2010, based on figures in the annual reports for those years:


Across the industry, weekday circulation fell an average 16.4% from 2004-2009, to 45.7 million copies, according to the Newspaper Association of America. That's the most recent six-year period available on its website.

What about your paper?
For a list of all papers' circulation in 2005, start on Page 12 of that year's annual report. For last year, Page 18 of the 2010 report.

Earlier: Westchester's collapse "is a shame to the entire company."

41 comments:

  1. This is interesting, Jim. Not sure if you have any interest, but what about compiling all of the papers that existed (Gannett owned) in 2005 and still exist (Gannett owned) and then do an average percent change on the entire group? I think that might really add some more fascination to your already fascinating report. I think it would be interesting to plot the overall percent change in circ (by year) for the past 15 years on a line graphic. Sure, it would show the obvious but it would probably plot an interesting trend line.

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  2. ...now, engage in an entirely irrelevant series of vague references and generalizations. If you describe with any specificity a person or persons responsible for this massive failure, your comment will be deleted.

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  3. Cherry Hill went from 71,000 in 2005 to 51,000 in 2010; a loss of 10 subscribers per day every day for 5 years. Wow.

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  4. Wow. Reno is down more than 30 percent as well. This despite the fact that managers regularly talk about how solid the newspaper industry still is. The pep talks come in between rounds of layoffs, of course.

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  5. Yow! Courier News dropped by 50 percent, 37,282 daily to 18,437 in 2010. March 2011 number was 17,531.

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  6. Whatever we collectively think of Gannett management and all, these numbers obviously reflect the industry-wide collapse in print readership.

    I suspect any other newspaper chain's numbers would look similar.

    Sad.

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  7. 9:29 - Cherry Hill. Westchester.

    Seems wherever the incompetent Tom Donovan has gone, circulation has plummeted. "TD" was named publisher of The Journal News in 2005 when circulation plunge started. He left for the Jersey papers, including Cherry Hill, three years ago.

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  8. 10:13. I just added the following to this post:

    Across the industry, weekday circulation fell an average 16.4% from 2004-2009, to 45.7 million copies, according to the Newspaper Association of America. That's the most recent five-year period available on its website.

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  9. Some of the decline, for newspapers with a regional mission (or that used to have a regional mission), came from reducing circulation areas. Some areas were deemed to cost too much to service. I know this is the case with The Courier-Journal and probably for a lot of the papers on that list. This didn't mean those people no longer wanted they paper -- they did; the company decided it couldn't make enough profit delivering it.

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  10. I was positive our paper would be in the top ten...I'm just gonna believe we're #11!

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  11. 10:30, the combination of Donovan and overmatched, underperforming EE Henry M. Freeman launched the Journal News' fall of the cliff.

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  12. I'm pretty skeptical of those numbers. The newsletter, I mean paper, that I know does not have that many come off the press.

    Are they counting paid online in addition at the paywall guinea pigs?

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  13. In Wilmington. The "we suck less" paper. We're down from 140k-ish to 118K

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  14. Wait a minute. I thought News 2000 and Real Life, Real News were supposed to sell more newspapers?

    Oh, that's right. They didn't. More useless concepts.

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  15. Re 8:04 a.m.....That's it! The Journal News "leadership," since the mid-1990s has been good for one thing: marching to the newest corporate tune.

    Everyone got wrapped up in total BS that was taken, in a typical G A N N E T T fashion, to a ridiculous nth degree.

    A lot of the corporate people sent to the JN had absolutely no interest in learning anything about the area and the people.

    There was a long period when the reader was viewed as an idiotic impediment, while the newsroom leadership (and some reporters) felt that they knew everything and only their opinions counted.

    Westchester was positioned to be a real force, a real presence, but G A N N E T T greed for shifting dollars to corporate, and its uniquely inept management, simply ran it into the ground.

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  16. 7:40, you're citing the higher Sunday circulation for Wilmington

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  17. But didn't mainstreaming increase our circulation among minorities?

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  18. I am curious to see a revenue spreadsheet. I suspect the losses are more severe than the circulation declines.

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  19. Papers were and are being starved to death. Once Gannett went public, it sold its sold to the devil. Digital future is on of tiny. poorly paid staffs and mostly junk content.

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  20. the big biz professor9/12/2011 10:39 AM

    And why does this surprise anyone? Diminish the quality and quantity of your product and What a Shock, customers don't buy it. No new logo, or branding campaign will make up for a loss in those two areas. Ask the American auto industry about it.
    Now, can the board look upon this as a big "Failing grade" for the five knuckleheads in the executive suite and adjust their paychecks and bonuses accordingly?
    Or are only lowly peon employees subject to the performance review and it's affect on compensation?

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  21. If the circ figures are correct, the daily figures for the Journal News might be something like under 60,000 in Westchester and less than 20,000 in Rockland.

    What's going on with the web sites since print's in the toilet? And I wonder how much of a bite the new non-Gannett websites are taking.

    I think Gannett's in danger of losing the digital game in Westchester, too.

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  22. I think you're going to see a big drop-off in circulation figures from the Asbury Park Press once they tally the numbers for 2011. The redesign and addition of USA Today pages were the last straw for a lot of readers who were already sick of what has become a flimsy daily pamphlet.

    And the Courier Post numbers are staggering - 50,000 is such a woeful circ to have in that market.

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  23. I don't think these numbers will make Miriam's next monthly newsletter.

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  24. Declines are not surprising at all. ABC forced newspapers to eliminate games like bonus days that counted sampled papers as paid; big numbers in some markets who used it weekly. Plus, let’s not forget Gannett continues to publish content online for free that often appears the next day or days later in print for a price, one consumers increasingly refuse to pay.

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  25. I think it should be noted that the Cinti. Enquirer received a bump in circulation at the end of 2007, due to the closing of its only daily "rivals", Scripps' Cinti.\Ky Post papers. Without that increase, I would wager its decline would be in the 20-30 percentages, like its brethren.

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  26. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  27. Aside from the secular issues impacting the business, much of the overall circ drop is self-inflicted. I pulled the plug on my Cincinnati Enquirer subscription this year because it simply no longer worth the few minutes it took to flip through it. More than ever before, the Enquirer under Washburn is about "good news," boring photo slide shows, festival coverage, obits, sappy feature stories, people hired or promoted, and rah-rah stories about the region, small businesses and friends of the publisher. Gannett should sell it to the chamber of commerce.

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  28. It is a shoddy newspaper with uninteresting stories and pathetic photos. It was once a great newspaper with clear direction and compelling stories and images. What happened?

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  29. Obviously - Gannett's conglomeration of papers in second-tier markets, the rustbelt, depressed and or former risky fast growth markets and the various 'villes and 'burgs here and yon has fared worse than the industry average. Some of those declines are pretty stunning - and sobering.

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  30. Cincy's numbers would be a lot worse if not for the continuing practice of extending grace days when the subscriber's money runs low. This plus the 50+ Bonus Days before ABC stepped in with their rulings make the numbers nothing more than fantasy anyway.

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  31. Wilmington has one of the top Sunday Circulation numbers in all of Gannett. We are continuing to go over last year's numbers. all is not dead in Gannett land.

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  32. Looks like dumbing down the newspaper failed. Too bad many people here thought it was a good thing because it would make their jobs easier. Now they have no job.

    Of course, they still refuse to admit that approach was a bad thing. Some of them still rub that rabbit's foot, thinking it has to pay off.

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  33. Interesting that Cincy and Louisville's circulations are exactly the same, even though the Cincy metro area is about twice as big in population.

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  34. Cheers to your success 10:27 P.M. but one has to wonder how much of that growth is actual consumer demand and what will happen as more and more obtain Sunday coupon’s elsewhere online, let alone 7/24 for free.

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  35. Well, the good news is with all the emphasis on distribution over content, we will have plenty of places to get out way-below-par information into the hands of consumers. But will they want it?

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  36. Wonder how many presidents rings combined it took to over see this free fall.

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  37. Asbury got their lunch eaten by The Star-Ledger during hurricane Irene. They still pour resources into a story. Journal News has been pretty much dismissed by what was left of their readers. The good news is the execs got their bonuses.

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  38. Yep. Circulation down. People are going to the internet and "other sources". Funny the question is never asked WHY they are leaving the paper. Higher price for less content, and in my paper, 3/4 of what's in there comes from somewhere else. People don't want to open a local paper and read stuff from USA today, this town or that town. Heck, even the editorials aren't our's anymore. As long as this kind of stuff keeps happening we'll keep losing readers.

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  39. Interesting...those properties house Gannett's leadership icons. Nice work!

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  40. If a newspaper in a major market loses 38-percent of its circulation over a five-year span, how do its doors stay open? Should we start a pool to when TJN finally shuts down? As a former TJNer, I was convinced the lights would go out in 2008. Shocked it's still kicking.

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  41. We at the JN had a brief moment of potential brilliance from around '97 to '01, and it was pissed away. I don't care what the economic conditions are — you can't tell me you can't at least maintain circulation in as densely populated, literate and news-filled a region as the Put/West/Rock circ area. Small local papers are doing damn good business (I see one little one-person shop in NJ is advertising for a sales team). The newsroom was rife with the usual power plays, turf wars and political retribution, but it took a big turn for the worse around '04-'05. If you weren't part of the anointed team, walking lockstep toward disaster, you were shut out completely. It's near criminal what this product has suffered ... those of us with pride and devotion to our craft finally took the hint and got out — with our good names intact.

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Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."

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