R-J bucks industry trend, posts increase in circulation

NEW YORK -- The Las Vegas Review-Journal was one of the few big city newspapers to show an increase in circulation, according to figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations for the six-month period ending in March.

With most major newspapers showing circulation declines, among the top 20 U.S. papers only the USA Today and The Wall Street Journal managed to eke out a slight gain of just less than 1 percent.

The Review-Journal's daily circulation was up slightly more than that, though, growing 1.05 percent to 174,095 in combined circulation for March, which includes the Las Vegas Sun.

The Review-Journal's circulation on Sunday, which also includes the Sun newspaper, was down 2.26 percent to 199,356.

USA Today, owned by industry leader Gannett Co., remained the top-selling paper in the country with an average daily circulation of 2,284,219, up 0.3 percent.

The Wall Street Journal kept its No. 2 spot at 2,069,463, up 0.4 percent.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. bought the Journal's parent company Dow Jones & Co. last December.

The New York Times was still No. 3 at 1,077,256, but that was down 3.9 percent from the same period a year earlier. The New York Times Co. also owns The Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune.

Newspaper circulation has been declining since the 1980s, but the pace of declines has picked up in recent years as reader habits change.

National newspapers like USA Today and the Journal have tended to hold their ground better, as have smaller-market dailies where competition from other media like the Internet isn't usually as intense.

Metropolitan dailies have suffered the worst declines, a trend that continued in the most recent reporting period, with the Dallas Morning News reporting a 10.6 percent drop to 368,313.

The Dallas paper's corporate owner A.H. Belo Corp., newly spun out of broadcasting company Belo Corp., said as part of its earnings statement Monday that the company was culling less valuable circulation such as copies distributed through third parties.

Other metro dailies also posted steep declines, including The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, down 8.5 percent to 326,907, and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, down 6.7 percent to 321,984.

Declines at some other major papers were less severe, with the New York Daily News narrowly keeping the upper hand on its crosstown tabloid rival, Murdoch's New York Post.

The Daily News posted a 2.1 percent decline to 703,137, while the Post fell 3.1 percent to 702,488.

The Daily News had edged past the Post in the last circulation reporting period, the six-month period ending in September.

Both Murdoch and Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman are going after Newsday on neighboring Long Island, which Tribune Co. has decided to consider selling as it struggles with declining ad revenues and an $8.2 billion debt load it took on as part of a going-private transaction last December.

Newsday, meanwhile, posted a 4.7 percent decline in circulation to 379,613. Newsday circulates mainly on suburban Long Island near New York City.

Despite the persistent declines in print circulation, newspapers have also been attracting more readers to their Web sites, which, as many publishers point out, results in a larger total combined audience.

Earlier in April the Newspaper Association of America released a study showing that newspaper Web sites attracted an average of about 66 million unique visitors in the first quarter, up about 12 percent over the same period a year ago.

The problem for publishers has been turning that online traffic growth into revenues.

Online advertising at newspapers grew 18.8 percent last year, according to association figures, but that wasn't enough to offset a 9.4 percent decline in print advertising.