Circulation falls again at Times, P-I; online readers up

Circulation at Seattle's two daily newspapers continued to drop over the past year, according to figures released Monday.

The decline is part of a long-running, industrywide trend. But executives at The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer maintained that their total regional audience, print and online, actually is growing.

A trade association said that's also true of newspapers nationally.

Average weekday circulation for the six-month period that ended Sept. 30 dipped 1.3 percent at The Seattle Times and 4.9 percent at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from the same period a year earlier, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The Times' weekday circulation for the latest reporting period was 212,691, and the P-I's was 126,225, the bureau said.

Circulation of the Sunday newspaper, which is produced almost entirely by The Times but bears the mastheads of both newspapers, dropped 4.1 percent, to 423,275.

The latest declines are less precipitous than those of a year ago, when The Times reported a 7 percent slide and the P-I a 9 percent drop in weekday circulation compared with the previous year. At that time, the papers blamed the declines on one-time moves — a newsstand price increase and a decision to cut circulation in parts of Eastern Washington — and said circulation would start to level out soon.

Times Vice President Jill Mackie said Monday that the new numbers bear out that prediction. "It's certainly much better news than we have been getting, and more reflective of our real numbers instead of our cutbacks," she said.

But circulation numbers alone no longer reflect newspaper readership accurately, Mackie added.

P-I Editor and Publisher Roger Oglesby agreed: "We have an audience out there that we're reaching in different ways," he said.

Scarborough Research of New York reports that total readership of the two newspapers and their affiliated Web sites in the Greater Seattle area during the 12-month period that ended in February, increased 0.5 percent from the previous year. That's largely because of an 8.3 percent increase in the regional online audience.

The Newspaper Association of America, a trade association, said newspaper Web sites attracted 58 million unique viewers in September, up from 41 million two years earlier. That demonstrates "the importance of applying measurement techniques that more accurately reflect the total newspaper audience," the group said.

Oglesby said the P-I's Web site is getting 30 million page views a month. Mackie said The Times' site attracted more than 37 million page views in September.

Newspapers still rely on the ink-and-paper product for most of their revenue, however. That's why declining print circulation is a major concern.

Nationally, weekday circulation among the 770 newspapers whose totals were reported Monday fell 2.8 percent during the most recent six-month period. The P-I's decline was steeper than that, The Times' less severe.

But Oglesby said that because the papers are bound by a joint-operating agreement (JOA), advertisers are more interested in the total for both papers: a 2.7 percent slide.

He wouldn't discuss why the P-I's circulation continues to drop faster than The Times'. In the past, however, officials at the P-I's parent, The Hearst Corp., have accused The Times of working to sabotage the smaller paper.

Times officials have denied that charge, arguing that readers are choosing the higher-quality product.

Under the 23-year-old JOA, The Times handles circulation and other business functions for both papers, while each maintains competing news and editorial operations.

The Times, which says it has lost money under the arrangement for each of the past six years, has moved to exercise an escape clause in the JOA that could result in termination of the agreement, the P-I's closure or both.

Hearst, which says the P-I couldn't survive outside the JOA, is fighting that attempt.

An arbitrator is scheduled to decide the dispute in the spring.

Few cities Seattle's size still have competing daily newspapers. The Times has maintained for years that the local market no longer can support both. Mackie said Monday that the latest circulation numbers support that view.

Falling circulation is one of several interrelated problems plaguing the newspaper industry. Ad revenue is mostly stagnant and competition from the Internet more intense.

The profits and stock prices of publicly traded newspaper companies are down. Many papers are laying off or buying out employees.

Other area newspapers also saw weekday circulation declines during the six-month reporting period: 5.7 percent at The (Tacoma) News-Tribune; 3.5 percent at the Kent-based King County Journal; and 1.5 percent at The (Everett) Herald.

Nationally, The New York Times' weekday circulation dropped 3.5 percent; The Washington Post's, 3.3 percent; the Los Angeles Times', 8 percent; and the San Francisco Chronicle's, 5.3 percent.

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com