Colorado newspapers are using the Internet to reach more people than before, but average paid circulation generally declined in the six months ended in September, according to circulation figures released Monday.
The scenario could spell trouble for some newspapers, as readers and advertisers increasingly move from the ad-rich print editions and toward online offerings that are less lucrative for their owners, observers said.
The combined average weekday circulation for The Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News declined by 1.4 percent in the six-month period.
In the year ended Sept. 30, combined circulation declined 4.1 percent on weekdays, held steady on Saturdays and was down 3.4 percent on Sundays, according to data compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The Post had weekday circulation of 264,301 (the News reported 263,425), according to the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handles business operations for The Post, published by Denver-based ap, and the News, published by Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co.
Those numbers are down from September 2004, when The Post had 275,292 subscribers and the News had 275,136 subscribers.
The Post’s Sunday circulation – the nation’s sixth-largest – was 725,178, down from 750,593 in 2004. Saturday circulation of the News was 593,747; in 2004, it was 595,512.
The two papers’ combined numbers mirrored national trends, which showed average declines among the largest metropolitan newspapers between 3.7 percent and 4.4 percent, according to Kirk MacDonald, chief executive of the Denver Newspaper Agency.
Two smaller Colorado newspapers posted gains in paid circulation. The Sentinel in Grand Junction picked up 600 readers to 30,400, and the Greeley Tribune added 200 daily to 25,120.
The New York Times, with a 0.46 percent circulation increase, and the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger were the only two large U.S. dailies to report growth, the report showed.
Despite the declines at most papers, the total “brand audience” for both The Post and the News continued upward, thanks mostly to increased traffic on the papers’ websites.
The total brand audience, defined as the minimum number of Denver adults exposed to the print edition plus the number of unique visitors to the agency’s websites, has increased by 66 percent during the past three years, according to the Denver Newspaper Agency.
By that measure, the papers’ total audience surged from slightly more than 3 million in August 2002 to more than 5 million today, the agency said in a statement.
“It’s long past time for our industry to recognize that we are in a new age of media consumption,” MacDonald said in a statement. “The key measurement is total audience.
“… The Denver Newspaper Agency has the largest print audience in Colorado and the largest Web audience in Colorado – and therefore the largest combined audience of any media in the region.”
However, many newspaper websites, including those of The Post and the News, don’t charge readers. The websites also command lower advertising rates than print, said John Kimball, chief marketing officer for the Newspaper Association of America, a trade group in Vienna, Va.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-820-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
