It’s news to no one that physical, print newspapers are in the throes of a historic decline. But the numbers themselves really take your breath away when you see them. According to the Audit Bureau, daily circulation fell 10.6% year over year in the period between April to September.
Ad revenues are one thing; and they’re likely enough to be fatal to newspapers as the dominant mode of news distribution in the country. But that figures in economic trends of various sorts. But readership, while obviously intimately related, is a different sort of metric. I have many thoughts on this. But at the moment I’m not sure what to say other than those numbers take my breath away. A ten percent decline year over year is the rate of a mode of distribution going out of existence.
Late Update: Look at this graphical representation of the circulation declines of several major metro dailies. Scroll down — at first you’ll only see the line for the WSJ. But look particularly at the decline of the LAT. It takes your breath away.
