Post Circ Drop Continues

Yesterday’s report of the last six months of circulation figures for newspaper is sure to set off another round of hand-wringing among Post execs and people who love trudging down the walk in the morning to scoop a Real Hard Physical Copy of the newspaper off the street.

According to the new numbers, at a time when the average large newspaper sank 1.9 percent, the Post went down 2.7 percent in the six months ending March 31–leading to a weekday circ of 751,871 or roughly about three times the size of the Examiner’s print run and over seven times as large as the Washington Times.

Ever the optimist, Post Publisher Bo Jones said that the numbers were an improvement: “Our numbers are not down quite so much this year compared to last year.” Folks, beware of any spin that boils down to “we are now dying at a slower rate than we were dying.”

The only bright signs in the circ reports appear to be that the NYT and USA Today posted some modest gains as they expanded their national distribution.

Nevertheless, the trends are forcing newspaper execs to confront a reality where most people are learning to get news for free–both on the web and through papers like the Examiner.

Long live the newspaper!

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