US records 9% fall in newspaper circulation: Report

As more people turnto the Internet for news, a loss of add revenues that coincided with thefinancial crisis has led to heavy losses for US newspapers in the past fewyears.

"The averageweekday sales down almost 9 per cent since the same time last year," saidthe New York Times, which is also suffering the same decline as most othernewspapers except the Wall Street Journal.

Compared with a yearago, The Journal was up 0.5 per cent, the only newspaper among the 25 largestto experience a weekday increase.

The Journal's numberswere helped by the 414,000 paid subscribers to its electronic editionsincluding its website, according to the NYT.

With the exception ofthe Journal, most American newspapers do not charge for their websites yet andtheir online readership is not included in the circulation bureau's calculation(Audit Bureau of Circulation), although their paid subscriptions to otherelectronic editions are included.

The Journal's slightgain helped the paper widen its lead over USA Today for the largest circulationover all, 2.1 million to 1.8 million.

The latter used to bethe largest paper in circulation before losing it to The Journal last fall.

On Sunday, the AuditBureau of Circulations reported sales dropping 6.5 per cent and weekday sales8.7 per cent compared with the same six-month period a year ago.

The figures are basedon reports filed by hundreds of individual papers, according to NYT.

"The decline waswidespread, as nearly all of the major newspapers and many of the smaller oneslost circulation," itsaid.

Among the 25 largestpapers, The San Francisco Chronicle suffered the most, losing 22.7 per cent ofits weekday sales.

In the last year,circulation at The New York Times dropped 5.1 per cent on Sunday, to 1.4million copies, and 8.5 per cent on weekdays, to 950,000.

The Los Angeles Timesdeclined 7.6 per cent on Sunday and 14.7 per cent during the week. The ChicagoTribune fell 7.5 per cent on Sunday and 9.8 per cent during the week.