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Intro | Content Analysis | Audience | Economics | Ownership | News Investment | Public Attitudes | Conclusion | Charts & Tables
Audience
Newspaper circulation is in decline.
The root problems go back to the late 1940s, when the percentage
of Americans reading newspapers began to drop. But for years
the U.S. population was growing so much that circulation kept
rising and then, after 1970, remained stable.
That changed in 1990 when circulation began to decline in
absolute numbers.
And the problem now appears to be more than fewer people
developing the newspaper habit. People who used to read every
day now read less often. Some people who used to read a newspaper
have stopped altogether.
Today, just more than half of Americans (54 percent) read
a newspaper during the week, somewhat more (62 percent) on
Sundays, and the number is continuing to drop.
Overall, some 55 million newspapers are sold each day, 59
million on Sunday.
At the same time, the number of newspapers in the country
has been on a steady decline for even longer, dropping nearly
1 percent a year for now two decades to 1,457 in 2002.
Where are readers going? It is impossible to say fully. Some
people may be getting news online, some perhaps from cable
television. Some may be opting out of traditional news sources.
Others may be sharing copies of a paper among multiple readers.
Many people now read newspapers only occasionally, a couple
days a week, but no longer everyday. Much of the loss came
from people no longer reading afternoon papers. Whatever it
is, these people are not paying everyday for the journalism
produced by newspapers, even if they are reading it in other
outlets such as online.
Some newspaper companies are now de-emphasizing paid circulation
and pushing total readership as more meaningful. Readership
helps capture multiple readers in a single household or people
reading a copy in public settings like a coffee shop or waiting
room. And readership studies can provide advertisers with
more detailed information about who reads, what they read
and how much time they spend with a newspaper. But the emphasis
on readership is also a sign that the circulation story is
not a good one.
Daily Circulation
In some ways, it is remarkable how long newspaper circulation
remained so stable. From World War II until 1970, as the United
States saw tremendous economic growth, a rising and changing
population, a move to suburbia, and the advent of television,
the number of newspapers sold each day in the United States
was still growing.
During this time, a smaller percentage of Americans read
a newspaper every day - especially after the evolution of
TV news in the 1960s. The erosion, however, was outpaced by
population growth - a nearly 50 percent increase in the number
of U.S. households between 1970 and 1990.
By 1970, indeed, newspaper reading in the United States had
reached a new peak. Some 62 million newspapers were sold in
the country every day.
U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation
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Weekday and Sunday editions, measured in five-year increments,
1940 to 2000
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By 1990, however, even the boost from a growing population
was not enough to maintain how many newspapers were sold each
day. Circulation began dropping at the rate of 1 percent every
year from 1990 to 2002. By 2002, weekday circulation of U.S.
newspapers had dropped 11 percent in 12 years.
The real rate of circulation decline could be even greater.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations changed the way it counted
circulation to include bulk sales of papers to places like
airlines and hotels for free distribution. These sales are
technically "bought" by the hotel or airline, often
through a barter exchange, but can make up a significant part
of total circulation. For example, 46 percent of USA Today's
circulation - 987,670 papers - comes from bulk sales.
And the ABC rules have been liberalized in other smaller ways
through the years, masking even further the true extent of
circulation loss, according to Rick Edmonds at the Poynter
Institute who has examined this closely.
The vast majority of circulation loss in the last 30 years
has been at afternoon papers, and much of that from papers
that ceased publishing. Some other losses in overall circulation
since 1990 came from papers purposely trimming delivery to
distant outlying communities. Thus some of the loss does not
suggest free-fall. Indeed, morning circulation in 2001 was
the highest it has ever been - 46.8 million - before declining
slightly in 2002 (the first decline in morning circulation
since 1975).
To fully appreciate the drop in the newspaper's popularity,
it is also useful to take a closer look at so-called "household
penetration" - the number of newspapers sold as a percentage
of all households in the country. In one sense, penetration
reveals the full extent of newspapers' declining appeal. In
1950, 123 percent of households bought a newspaper (in other
words there were 1.23 papers sold per household.) By 1990,
only 67 percent of households bought a newspaper. By 2000,
it was 53 percent.
U.S. Daily Newspaper Circulation vs. Number of Households
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Number in millions, measured in 10-year increments
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In another sense, however, penetration reveals the endurance
of newspapers as an advertising medium. While papers were
losing audience, their new rivals were more fragmented - multiple
television broadcast stations in each town, 40 cable channels
and eventually myriad Web sites. Even if the percentage of
households buying a newspaper has dropped to almost half,
that still makes the lone newspaper in town the most wide-reaching
single buy for advertisers.
Sunday Circulation
Sunday circulation, for many years, saw a different trend.
Newspapers found that many of their readers were tending to
read less often, but more on Sundays and a few occasional
other days. Advertisers, moreover, wanted to be in the Sunday
paper, when people had more time. Sunday papers swelled in
size, and thus in appeal, and more papers launched Sunday
editions (there were 913 in 2002, up 56 percent from1970).
As a consequence, while daily circulation after World War
II was flat, Sunday circulation continued to grow, peaking
in 1990.
Since then, however, Sunday circulation has been dropping
too, like weekday, but at a slower pace (0.5 percent annually
versus 1 percent for weekdays). By 2002, Sunday circulation
was at 58.8 million, down 6 percent since its peak in 1990.
Reading Habits
Beyond the numbers, it is also helpful to examine reading
habits to understand what was driving people away from newspapers,
and why it accelerated after 1990. Part of the explanation,
of course, is that lifestyle and technological changes altered
the news business. The population shift away from urban to
suburban America - and the problems that created for home
delivery - helped erode the afternoon paper. The evening paper
was a perfect match for the 1950s factory worker who came
home at 4 p.m. to a stay-at-home mom and a nuclear family.
But factory jobs have steadily given way to other forms of
employment. Nuclear families are much less the norm. And,
married or not, most moms themselves now work. Morning circulation
first surpassed evening in 1982. By 2002, there were nearly
five and half morning newspapers sold for each evening newspaper.
Number of U.S. Daily Newspapers
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Weekday and Sunday editions, 5-year increments, 1940
to 2000
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But as those shifts were occurring, the newspaper industry
also made choices that had important and likely negative consequences
on readership and circulation. Newspapers make roughly 80
percent of their revenue from advertising, and only 20 percent
from circulation.
Indeed, it costs most papers more to print each paper than
they actually sell it for, but higher sales allow the papers
to charge higher advertising rates. Influenced in part by
advertisers who increasingly wanted to focus exclusively on
people who were likely to buy a lot of goods, newspaper companies
in the 1970s and 1980s decided to chase demographics rather
than readers. Around the same time, many newspapers also began
embarking on pricing strategies that further made the newspaper
even more forbidding to less affluent audiences.
That shift toward elite audiences dictated where the circulation
declines occurred. By and large, when the afternoon papers
that appealed more to working class readers died, those readers
stopped reading newspapers.
People can debate which came first - the disappearance of
middle-class audiences or the pricing and coverage strategies
that made newspapers even less appealing to those audiences.
Whichever, they reinforced each other. In the short run, that
may have made economic sense. Why add readers who advertisers
are not interested in, when the cost of producing and delivering
additional newspapers does not pay for itself without new
advertising dollars to underwrite it?
But in the long run, as the circulation numbers suggest,
the strategy raises questions. As the children of these lost
readers become more affluent and influential, can it be assumed
that they will just gravitate to a newspaper no matter what?
And how can a publisher grow a business in the long-term if
it is not growing its audience?
Average Circulation of U.S. Daily Newspapers
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Weekday and Sunday editions, measured in five-year increments,
1940 to 2000
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The Rise of National Newspapers
An exception to the 20-year slide in circulation has been
national papers. USA Today has gone from a dead start to a
circulation of 2.1 million daily. There is no exact measure
of its impact on other dailies, but it clearly supplants local
papers for conventiongoers and other travelers and represents
competition to the other two nationally circulated dailies,
The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Only 14 percent
of USA Today's circulation comes from home delivery. The Wall
Street Journal holds its own, going back over the 2 million
mark (with the addition in the most recent ABC audit of 300,000
paid subscribers to its online edition).
Three-quarters of its circulation is attributed to home delivery
and subscription sales spread across the country. Less obviously,
The New York Times has gradually shifted from a metropolitan
New York paper with some national circulation to having nearly
half its circulation outside the New York City area.
In addition to a variety of free Internet news sites and
the rise of CNN and NPR, the competitive climate for providing
a basic national and international news report has grown far
tougher for the typical metropolitan or small-city newspaper.
Together, the top 7 percent of the nation's newspapers (105
out of 1,457) command 55 percent of the total circulation.
Number of U.S. Daily Newspapers with Circulation Over
50,000
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1950 to 2000, measured in 5-year increments
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Who Is Reading: A Question Of Demographics
In trying to assess circulation and readership trends, there
are other elements of demographics that need to be understood
beyond income. Three stand out.
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The problem for the newspaper industry is not just young
readers. People of every age bracket - except those over
65 - are starting to read newspapers less.
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The newspaper industry is failing to attract newer immigrant
groups. The backbone of the industry remains non-Hispanic
whites and African Americans, the two population groups
not growing much.
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Papers are losing among people at all educational levels,
although that trend may have reversed somewhat since September
11.
Age Groups
As always, young people appear to read newspapers less than
their elders. According to 2003 data from Scarborough Research,
a consumer market company, only 40 percent of people aged
18 to 24 read a paper on weekdays, and less than half on Sundays
(48 percent). The numbers are slightly higher for people 25-34
(41 percent weekdays and 52 percent Sundays).
Weekday Newspaper Readership by Age Group
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Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2003
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Sunday Newspaper Readership by Age Group
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Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2003
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The more important trend today may be what is happening to
readers between the ages of 34 and 64, the people who should
be the prime target for becoming citizens engaged in civil
society. These are the people buying houses, having children,
worrying about schools, building their careers, running for
office, becoming leaders in their communities. Their numbers
are declining as well, and in some cases at a faster rate
than for people under 34.
These findings are borne out by new studies by the Pew Research
Center for the People and the Press. While its earlier studies
of what it called the "Age of Indifference" suggested
that young people were not acquiring the news consumption
habits at the same rate in their 20s as was true of earlier
generations, the newest survey on news consumption, in 2002,
found evidence that developing the habit was no longer the
lone issue. People who had become newspaper consumers had
stopped.
The bright spot for newspapers remains, as it has for some
years, older people. Readership for people over 65 is just
barely declining - 1 percent since 1999 for both daily and
Sunday. One question is whether Baby Boomers, who will begin
to turn 65 in 2011, will read newspapers as heavily as people
that age do now. If so, that could be a boon to newspapers.
If not, more trouble looms.
This is one reason why current experiments by papers like
The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune to produce free
papers aimed at young adults (18-to-34-year-olds) are being
so closely watched.
To many in the newspaper industry, the fact that newspapers
began only recently to experiment with such papers reflects
the industry's slowness to innovate and to invest in research
and development generally. These kinds of enterprises are
typically defensive moves to protect the franchise. They are
most often initiated out of fear that a portion of the market
is slipping away or has never developed the newspaper reading
habit. Free papers first appeared as alternative papers many
years ago and were considered competition for entertainment
advertising but were never thought to be a serious competitor
or an idea that the metro papers should try.
Such thinking is explained, in part, by the old newspaper
business model for doing something new: return on investment.
There had to be projected revenue to offset costs of a new
venture in a relatively short term. Newspapers were not likely
to favor such investments solely for their long-term value
without a clear prospect for a new revenue stream. Indeed,
even some of these experiments are projected to generate revenue
and are being conducted at limited cost.
Ethnicity and Readership
The second major area of concern for the newspaper industry
may be ethnicity. The newspaper industry was built, more than
a century ago, by populist publishers such as Joseph Pulitzer
and E.W. Scripps on the appeal of newspapers to the masses,
particularly immigrants. Often these publishers themselves
were immigrants, as in the case of Pulitzer, Scripps, Adolph
Ochs and others.
The industry, now run by corporations rather than (often
immigrant) entrepreneurs, has moved in a very different direction
(see Reading Habits, above). At the beginning of the 21st
century, readership is lowest among the country's two fastest-growing
minority populations - Asians and Hispanics. The industry
is seeking to address this now. For instance, this year newspapers
in Dallas and Fort Worth joined the paper in Miami in offering
Spanish-language editions. The Los Angeles Times is launching
a Spanish-language edition in Southern California to compete
with its former partner, the family-owned La Opinion, which
in turn joined forces with a New York Spanish-language daily,
El Diario/La Prensa, so that they could compete with the major
newspaper chains for major advertisers. This battleground
is a trend to monitor.
Among Asians, weekday readership in 2003 had dropped 5 percentage
points in the four years since 1999 (to just 46 percent).
That is a faster rate of decline than for whites (down 3 percentage
points in that time) or African Americans (down 2 percentage
points).
Among the fastest-growing group in America, those who describe
themselves as Latino or Hispanic, there has been a 4-point
drop, again higher than for whites or African Americans. This
group, indeed, has the lowest weekday readership rates of
the four groups (just 35 percent, down from 39 percent four
years earlier). The same rapid declines are true on Sunday.
Data on the Spanish language presses (see ethnic and alternative
news chapter) suggest that these immigrants are reading newspapers,
but they are choosing Spanish-language papers over those in
English.
Weekday Newspaper Readership by Race-Ethnicity
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Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2003
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Sunday Newspaper Readership by Race-Ethnicity
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Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2003
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Education
While people with more education remain more likely to read
a newspaper, declines in readership have been occurring regardless
of education level.
Indeed, in the last four years, according to Scarborough,
readership has actually fallen somewhat faster among those
with four-year college degrees than among those with only
high school diplomas.
Among college graduates, the group most likely to report
reading the paper, readership has fallen 4 percentage points
in the last four years on weekdays (from 63 to 59 percent)
and 7 points on Sundays (from 76 to 69 percent). Among high
school graduates, the decline was 3 percentage points on weekdays
and 4 on Sundays (54 to 51 percent and 64 to 60 percent, respectively).
Readers with post-graduate degrees, however, reverse the
trend. From 1999 to 2002 their readership was declining along
with the other ages. But in 2003, their daily readership shot
up 10 percentage points from one year earlier to 68 percent.
Weekday Newspaper Readership by Education
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Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2003
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Sunday Newspaper Readership by Education
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Percentage reading newspapers in an average week, 1999-2003
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Education does correlate to readership. The most recent survey
data from the Pew Research Center, for instance, found that
52 percent of college graduates reported reading a newspaper
"yesterday," compared with 41 percent of high school
graduates and 24 percent of people without a high school degree.
Click
here to view footnotes for this section.
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