Houston Business Journal
The Houston Chronicle lost 14.2 percent of its daily circulation and 6.3 percent of its Sunday circulation in the six-month period ending Sept. 30 2009 compared with the same six months in 2008 according to Audit Bureau of Circulation figures released Monday. Daily circulation was 384419 as of Sept. 30 down from 448271 at the same point last year.
Meanwhile Sunday circulation fell to 547387 from 584160 last year. The Houston Chronicle retains the ninth-best daily circulation and seventh-best Sunday circulation among the Top 25 U.S. Daily Newspapers according to the ABC.
Hardest-hit during the period was the San Francisco Chronicle which lost 25.8 percent of its daily readership followed by the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger and the Dallas Morning News which both saw daily circulation drop 22 percent.
The 562 newspapers reporting data for Sunday circulation together lost an average of 3.2 million subscribers or nearly 7.5 percent to end at 40 million.
Publisher and President Jack Sweeney in a Monday article in the Houston Chronicle attributed the decline in print circulation to the newspapers delivery area being reduced to a 90-mile radius of downtown Houston and to price increases passed to the reader.
Revenue from circulation needs to carry a bigger portion of our business going forward so prices continue to be increased" Sweeney said in the article.
Overall U.S. newspaper daily circulation at 379 reporting papers lost an average of 3.6 million subscribers or 10.6 percent between September 2008 and September 2009 falling to about 30.4 million according to the ABC.
The Wall Street Journal was the only top-ranking newspaper to gain daily circulation moving up 0.61 percent. It has more than 2 million subscribers according to the ABC.
