A steady increase in digital circulation has helped newspapers combat the pressures on their print product, with average daily and Sunday circulation remaining essentially flat for the sixth-month period ending Sept. 30.
Digital circulation accounted for 15.3 percent of the total average circulation for newspapers in that period, up from 9.8 percent in the same period a year ago, an increase of more than 50 percent, according to figures released Tuesday by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Those figures include readers using smartphones, tablets, e-readers or metered Web sites, the bureau said.
Daily circulation decreased an average of 0.2 percent during the six-month period for the 613 newspapers that report comparable figures. Sunday circulation increased by 0.6 percent, the data showed.
Digital gains helped some newspapers make striking gains in overall daily circulation. The New York Times, for instance, had an increase of more than 40 percent in total circulation, from 1,150,589 in 2011 to 1,613,865 in the period ended Sept. 30 this year. Its average digital circulation for Monday-Friday totaled just over 896,000, and increase of 136 percent over a year ago. The Wall Street Journal gained about 200,000 in daily circulation from 2011 and had a digital circulation of 794,594.
The Journal had the highest total daily circulation, the figures showed, followed by USA Today and The New York Times. USA Today had the biggest print circulation. The Times’s average daily print circulation was 717,513, a 7 percent decline, and its Sunday average declined by 1.8 percent, to 1,250,077.
Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/30/digital-gains-help-newspaper-circulation-figures/?partner=rss&emc=rss