US newspaper crisis: Circulation continues to collapse
The crisis in the U.S. newspaper industry is worsening: Between April and September 2009, newspaper circulation fell by 10.6 percent compared with the same period the previous year. The Wall Street Journal, however, saw an increase.
The Wall Street Journal is one of the few newspapers that has been able to grow. With an increase in circulation of 0.6 percent to 2.024 million since September 2008, the Wall Street Journal became the newspaper with the highest circulation in the USA. The conservative paper from the house of media mogul Rupert Murdoch thus displaced USA Today from the top spot among US newspapers.
The circulation of USA Today fell by 17.1 percent to 1.9 million within a year. Other major newspapers also suffered severe setbacks: The New York Times lost 7.3 percent by September 2009 compared to the previous year and now has a daily weekday circulation of 928,000. The Los Angeles Times even suffered a drop of eleven percent (circulation: 658,000). The Washington Post lost 6.4 percent of its circulation to 583,000.
Recession exacerbates crisis
Newspapers in the USA have been in a serious crisis for several years now. The recession has exacerbated this. Newspaper advertising revenues have also been falling for more than two years. In the first quarter of 2009, they even fell by 29.7 percent. In 2006, newspapers still generated 49.3 billion dollars in advertising revenue, in 2008 it was just 38 billion dollars.
A further drastic decline is expected this year. The number of users of newspaper web portals has grown steadily in recent years to over 70 million per month. However, the already meagre advertising revenues have also fallen here in the face of the recession (by five percent in the second quarter). As a result of the newspaper crisis, since 2007
(estimated) well over 10,000 editors.
