Tuesday, November 06, 2018

Oregonian Continues Circulation Slide in 2018

[2020 paid circulation information is here.]

The 2018 Statements of Ownership published by the Oregonian in its October 12 and October 14, 2018 issues indicate the continuing slide of paid circulation.

The daily dropped from a paid circulation of 80,463 in September of 2017 to 68,704 in September of 2018. That's almost a 15% drop in one year.

The Sunday Oregonian is doing a little worse. Its paid circulation in September of 2017 was 113,348. This September it was 96,283--slightly more than a 15% drop.

Daily paid circulation is less than a third of what it was only six years ago in 2012 (68,704 compared with 219,997 in 2012).

My figures for the Sunday only go back to September of 2014, but only four years later today's paid circulation is less than half of what it was in then (96,283 compared with 203,031 in 2014).

These statistics don't include digital paid circulation, but the steep decline in the print version is not good news for the Oregonian, its employees,  the Newhouse family owners, or Portland.

Portland used to have two thriving daily newspapers, the Oregonian and the Oregon Journal. Now the one remaining is a shell of its former self, not to mention the loss of the Journal.


2 comments:

MAX Redline said...

The loss of the Journal was a real blow to the local publishing industry. And look at what's happened to it since.

The Oregonian may be good these days for those who want to pay to have ads delivered to their homes, but I'm not among them.

T. D. said...

Me neither, Max--plus a lot of other people. Down to a third of paid circulation they had just six years ago. That's a lot of dropped readers.

Besides its other problems of no longer being daily and politically skewed reporting, the lack of real reporting that actually looks at a story and interviews people from various points of view, not to mention expertise. You point this out all the time in your blog regarding them just republishing press releases from places like the Zoo.