Newspaper circulation way down, online readership way up

Good news for the newspaper industry, I think. This story in Editor and Publisher analyzes the recent numbers released by FAS-FAX on newspaper circulation. Overall, daily circulation was down 2.5 percent and Sunday circulations was down 3 percent. Not good news.

But this is good news, and I wonder if we will start seeing more reports on "total readership" as the norm. It seems like a much more relevant metric than circulation:

Some believe that total audience is a measurement the industry should have started pushing years ago. While the print product shows declines, online and niche products are actually growing the reach of newspapers. Among 25-to-34 year olds, at least 17 papers made a gain of 20% -- when factoring in Web sites.

The NAA reported that September marked a milestone for newspaper Web sites: More than 58 million people or more than one in three active Internet users visited a newspaper Web site -- a record.

There’s no question that newspapers are making great strides in driving online readership, especially as online revenue is growing like gangbusters. What remains to be seen is if they get the credit.

More than one in three active Internet users visited a newspaper Web site. Those are some darn good numbers. Could we see a further spike, and maybe get news readership back up to the levels we saw in 1970, when newspaper reading hit its peak? Some 62 million papers a day were sold in 1970. Granted there were fewer people in this country then, but that's an equally impressive number.

The fact is, newspapers do what only they can do. Taking the product online does not change it. In fact, it only enhances it.

I want to do a post on newspaper access...of course, we should be concerned about people who don't have Internet access. I am also curious about how Internet access is trending...how fast are people acquiring Internet access? If you have any good resources, let me know.