The Oregonian published it's Statement of Ownership information this month. This is required of newspapers and magazines using the U.S. Post Office to deliver copies of their publication.
The news was not good. Oregonian daily paid circulation for the August 28, 2020 Friday issue was 49,118. That's a drop of more than 10,000 from the August 23, 2019 Friday paid circulation of 59,998. It's an 18% loss in one year.
The daily paid circulation in 2012 was 219,997. There has been an astonishing 75% decline in daily paid circulation since then.
The Sunday edition's paid circulation fared slightly better than the daily with a 15% loss from 82,054 in 2019 to 69,726 in 2020. I only have stats from 2014 on the Sunday paper, but it is down 65% from 2014's paid circulation of 203,031.
Unfortunately, the steep fall in paid circulation follows upon an even worse slump in good reporting and editing. (See my last post on a poorly written article published earlier this month on Governor Brown's plan to spend $55 million in federal aid to help Oregon businesses suffering from COVID-19-related losses.)
2 comments:
It's no wonder the circulation has been in freefall. Seems as though the main job of Newhouse et all is to kill print.
I am a bit taken aback that they can stay in business with a 75% drop in paid circulation. Not only does this mean less direct income it also means less advertising income. If you only reach 25% of the people you used to reach with an ad, you're not going to pay a whole lot.
Of course, this doesn't take into account digital subscriptions. But, I can't imagine there being many of them.
The Newhouse clan does not seem to be business savvy. Oregon Journal dead, Oregonian in steep decline.
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