Despite competition from other media, US newspaper sales are holding up well and more than half of the adult population still reads a daily paper, according to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).
The latest Competitive Media Index (CMI) shows that the average daily circulation for newspapers tracked in the Audit Bureau of Circulations’ Fas-Fax report rose 0.2% to 48,997,100 in the six months to the end of September.
This translates to the fact that 54.1% of adults in the top 50 markets reads a newspaper every weekday. Some 62.5% of adults in those markets get a paper every Sunday but the average circulation of Sunday titles actually fell 0.4% to 53,854,152 in the six month period.
The NAA reports that newspapers in the leading markets are reaching 79.2% of adults over the course of a week (five weekdays and a Sunday).
USA Today remains the best selling daily newspaper with a circulation of around 2.25 million. The Wall Street Journal comes next with sales of 2.09 million. For the first time, Dow Jones included paid WSJ.com subscribers in its ABC circulation figures but most publishers remain unconvinced about online business models (see Publishers Expect Very Little From Online Revenues).
