ABCs: Newspapers continue print decline
Circulation continues to drop across national and metro newspapers, according to data released by the Audit Bureau of Circulation today.
The greatest fall comes from Sydney’s Sunday paper, Fairfax Media’s Sun-Herald, which has seen circulation dip by 24.4 per cent from 383,607 to 290,174 compared to the same period last year. Quarter on quarter, the circulation has fallen 7.43 per cent based on figures from the last audit period of October to December 2012.
Fairfax also took a hit with its Sydney weekday paper The Sydney Morning Herald losing 13.6 per cent of circulation since last year and 7.19 per cent since last quarter. This is despite the paper moving to a new compact size at the beginning of March.
Similarly, Melbourne’s The Age dropped 12.6 per cent to 144,277 from 165,061 in the same period last year.
I’m not surprised that the biggest declines have occurred in Fairfax’s Sydney papers.
It seems that most of their content comes from Melbourne these days. All the SMH journalists have left the building
I think the SMH has become a whole lot of nothing. They’d even increased the sections with a whole lot of nothing. Monday’s edition was exactly the same as Friday’s edition (even the cartoons aren’t funny!). I appreciate it was like 35 bucks a month, but I cancelled my subscription a month ago.
Hasn’t The Canberra times and NT News dropped below the ABC’s reporting threshold of 30k….?
It’s no surprise. There’s nothing in the SMH. Almost no news or journos bar Kate McClymont and Linton Besser. And you can get a year of the New Yorker for 3 months of the SMH.
Sauntered down to the Bondi Beach newsagency on Campbell Parade at 9.30 a.m. thinking I might buy the SMH – I’m old and after a life-time in print I still like ink on paper, okay! Anyway, they didn’t have any – most of their delivery got lost along the way. Apparently this is not unusual around here, but it’s pretty bad when it happens to the biggest newsagency in the area. Fairfax simply don’t care about print any more. At least News still make like they do, even if the Telecrap is a comic book.
It is very sad to read the SMH and Sun-Herald these days. There is just so little in them with any substance. Both papers seem to be edited to repel readers. I wish it was not so.
According to the ABC figures, the SMH and the AGE saw an 86% increase year on year for their weekday digital editions from 46,127 to 86,078. That’s massive and far higher than the other mastheads. It seems to me that Fairfax’s audience appears to be embracing digital more quickly than others. Fairfax’s websites are also the most visited news sites in Australia. So there’s no doubt their content is still in demand, the only question is what form it comes in.
ChocolateFan: sadly the reported subscriber numbers are only part of the story. The loss of print audience reflects a very large loss of ad dollars. The digital subs produce peanuts. The coming financial results will show i think that the sloppy approach to quality at fairfax has great cost.