Widening its circulation lead last year by over 40,000 copies, Mort Zuckerman‘s New York Daily News is now soundly beating Rupert Murdoch‘s New York Post with a much wider margin than in September of 2008, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. Back then, the Daily News was only leading by 4,100 copies over the Post. So what changed?

In 2006 the tense rivalry between Zuckerman and Murdoch’s publications seemed to be going to the Post, but as both papers have lost readers to the Internet and Murdoch raised the price of newsstand issues to 50 cents in 2008, the Daily News has come out the clear winner…at least in overall print consumers. That’s to say nothing of Internet readers, of which Murdoch, with his grand plans for making news aggregators pay, may learn to capitalize on before Zuckerman.

Then again, Murdoch has always made single-issue sales his bread-and-butter, and with last week’s quote from The Guardian‘s Alan Rusbridger about the Australian mogul losing his Fleet Street touch, the Daily News may be just more evidence to that point.

Read More: New York Daily News Circulation Lead Widens Over Post –Bloomberg

Previously: The Guardian‘s Editor Swipes At Pay Walls, Murdoch, Latest Newspaper Circ Numbers Show Ten Percent Drop