Newspapers’ Rapid Decline

Experts believe newspaper circulation will hit a floor, and then stabilize. Yet, 2015 numbers took many by surprise.

While newspaper circulation numbers are reported on a regular basis by media outlets, today’s numbers usually include print and digital circulation. Sometimes, the numbers also include free, promotional copies, to the extent allowable by the organizations that audit newspaper circulation. This piece by ProPublica President Richard Tofel provides a startling, eye-opening look at how rapidly newspapers’ paid, printed circulation has declined over the past two years, and ponders what’s next for the industry.

Here’s an excerpt from ‘The Sky is Falling on Print Newspapers Faster Than You Think’:

‘Last October, a McKinsey report declared, “We believe that many of the people likely to abandon print newspapers and print consumer magazines have already done so…. We believe most of this core audience — households that have retained their print subscriptions despite having access to broadband — will continue to do so for now, effectively putting a floor on the print markets.”

Wow. Just because of inertia? Is the only medium-term threat to print the fact that most of its current audience will gradually die over the next 30 years? That would be great news, especially because nearly all newspapers still get most of their revenue from print advertising.

But it doesn’t feel right in a world in which even mature adults’ media consumption habits seem to be quickly evolving.

Then, amid the hubbub about the Boston Globe’s delivery problems, I was struck by the Globe’s statement that they have only 115,000 daily print subscribers, and only 205,000 on Sunday. Really? I had had a sense that the Globe was still much bigger than that. So I poked around online, and, indeed found much larger numbers for Globe print circulation.

But they were from 2013, which is the last time print newspaper circulation figures were widely reported.’

Read the full article here.