Circulation decline speeding up

Figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show that newspaper circulation for the six months ending March 31 fell 7.1 percent, according to The New York Times.
That's an increase from the 4.3 percent and 3.6 percent drops over the previous two six-month periods.

Of the top 25 newspapers in the United States, all posted declines in circulation except for The Wall Street Journal, which eked out a 0.6 percent gain, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. For the others, the declines ranged from 20.6 percent for The New York Post, to a slight 0.4 percent drop for The Chicago Sun-Times.

The Audit Bureau also showed, however, that the number of unique visitors to newspaper websites is still increasing.
The sites combined to draw 73 million unique visitors per month in the first quarter of 2009, a year-over-year increase of 10.5 percent.
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Average time spent declines for many in March

Among the top 30 newspaper websites in terms of unique monthly visitors, most saw a decline in the average time spent per visitor in March, according to Editor & Publisher.

The average time spent per person at the NYTimes.com dropped by six minutes in March 2009 compared to the same period a year ago. The NYTimes.com has some company: The Wall Street Journal lost more than five minutes March 2009. So did Politico.
In fact, just over half of the top 30 newspaper Web sites (ranked by uniques) experienced declines in the average time spent per person.

Some sites enjoyed large gains, however. Both The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Newsday improved by more than eight minutes.
The New York Times was overtaken in first place by the Star Tribune, which lost about thirty seconds to finish with an average of over 32 minutes.
While the news can be interpreted negatively from an advertising standpoint, it can also be a sign that the number of unique users is increasing, which is the case for some papers on the list.
To see the list and read more, click here.