Report shows another drop in D&C circulation

The most recent circulation drop at the Democrat and Chronicle is in line with the 2.5 percent average decline newspapers are seeing across the country-but no less troubling, experts say.
The latest decline is one of the most substantial the industry has seen in recent years.
In a recent six-month reporting period, the results from which were released this month, the Democrat and Chronicle reported an average Monday through Friday circulation of 160,290, down 3 percent from 165,221 a year ago.
Included in the data issued by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Democrat and Chronicle reported a Saturday circulation of 174,613, down 3.03 percent from 180,078 and an average Sunday circulation of 219,660, down 1.8 percent from 223,718.
John Morton, national media analyst and president of Maryland-based Morton Research Inc., said circulation declines previously ranged from 1 percent to 1.5 percent but more recently have moved up to 2 percent to 2.5 percent.
“It’s not a precipitous decline, but some nibbles every year, and over time, that starts to add up,” he said.
The long-term trend has publishers scratching their heads as they look for ways to leverage their online readership and expand their reach with niche publications without cannibalizing their print circulation.
“There has been a steady pattern of decline or flat performance for 20 years,” said Colorado publisher Harrison Cochran and former two-time president of the Suburban Newspapers of America and board member of the National Newspaper Association.
“Given population growth and all promotional efforts, including bending the rules for third-party paid, (2.5 percent) is a devastating number,” Cochran added.
Analysis issued by the Newspaper Association of America indicates national newspapers and small-size daily newspapers maintained fairly steady circulation numbers in the most recent six-month period, while metropolitan newspapers-defined as those with circulations of 250,000 to 500,000-suffered the most.
With its circulation today, the Democrat and Chronicle falls just short of this category, but it logged the same kind of declines that larger metro dailies reported.
In the previous six-month reporting period, ended last September, declines at the Democrat and Chronicle were slightly less pronounced, with an average Monday through Saturday circulation of 164,373, down 1.4 percent from 166,727 the year before.
The newspaper’s average Sunday circulation-in the September report-was down slightly less than 1 percent to 222,627, from 224,408 the year before, continuing a long-term pattern at the newspaper, which since 2001 had seen a 6.6 percent drop in Monday through Saturday circulation and a 6.8 percent slide in Sunday circulation.
To counteract falling circulation for the Democrat and Chronicle itself, the newspaper in recent years has launched a series of niche publications.
Caroline Riby, media director at Roberts Communications Inc., said some clients, such as Farash Corp., are leveraging the reach that niche publications extend to younger readers.
Democrat and Chronicle-owned or -affiliated print and online niche publications such as apartments.com and Apartment Showcase, as well as Insider and ConXion, a Latino monthly, provide advertisers with package deals that work very well for advertisers such as Farash, a local real estate company, Riby said.
“So we’re not just buying in the real estate section,” she said. “We’re looking at it more as a package since no one media will have the impact that it used to have.”
These niche publications, particularly Insider, are important for targeting young people who are more interested in editorial that is focused on entertainment news, for example, Riby added.
“Younger people get their information as they want it. It’s very difficult to go after younger people with newsprint,” Riby said. “The more (publishers) look at themselves as information sources instead of print entities, the better off they’ll be.”
The Web is another way to reach younger markets, and the investment newspapers such as the Democrat and Chronicle have made in their online edition are showing returns.
Thomas Flynn, spokesman for the Democrat and Chronicle said, for example, that online banner advertising this year has increased significantly over last year. He noted that it is still too early to provide exact figures for the increase. On the print circulation decline, Flynn acknowledged it, pointing to a weak economy and low employment rates as reasons for people not buying the newspaper itself.
Riby says online advertising certainly has its appeal because often it is easier to gauge effectiveness, partly as a result of how many advertising programs now include an online element, she said.
“We’re not just buying a page (print ad), but we’re buying a banner and a sponsorship,” she said.
This month the NAA released Web site readership figures along with ABC’s print circulation figures for the six-month period ended in March.
The NAA reports that online readership for newspapers reached record levels in the first quarter, with more than one in three of all Internet users visiting a newspaper Web site over the course of a month.
Morton said that online editions show even more promise than a lot of the niche publications publishers are churning out, in part because online editions do more to promote the newspaper’s identity and reinforce name recognition, which he said have more importance in the eyes of advertisers.
Data from Nielsen/NetRatings, gathered by NetRatings Inc., show that newspaper Web sites averaged 56 million users, or 37 percent of all online users, during the first quarter, an 8 percent increase in reach over the same period a year ago.
And of the nearly 112 million people who visited news and information Web sites, close to 60 percent of those online visitors looking for online news and information turned to an online newspaper Web site.
Morton said that is due to the strength of their brand names online and offline.
In Rochester’s designated market area of approximately 685,000 adults, Flynn said 87 percent of them read the newspaper or check the online edition once a week. Compared to previous figures, the newspaper’s reach is inching up even if print circulation is sliding a little, Flynn said.
In the spring 2006 Newspaper Audience Database, also known as NADbase released by the NAA, eight in 10 adults, or 116 million people, are reading the newspaper over the course of a week, and one in three Internet users, or 55 million people, visit a newspaper Web site over the course of a month.
NADbase ranked the Democrat and Chronicle 64 out of 100 daily newspapers with a combined average weekday readership of 400,495, behind the Buffalo News, which ranked 51st with 474,645 readers and before Syracuse’s Post-Standard with 297,378 readers.
NADbase aggregates print audience data from Media Rating Council-accredited Scarborough Research and newspaper Web site data from Nielsen/NetRatings for the 100-plus newspapers representing most major markets.
“The declines do seem to be accelerating, but Web sites are probably the more promising long-term strategy (for publishers),” Morton said.
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05/19/06 (C) Rochester Business Journal