Although the latest newspaper circ numbers showed continued declines, changes to the way the Audit Bureau of Circulations counts electronic subscribers have obscured just how many readers the industry is losing. For instance, until this year, newspapers that sold print/digital subscriptions in a single package could only count them once, Under new rules set by the ABC back in April, individuals who got the bundled subscription deals could be counted twice—and, according to AP, the results were glossier in some cases. 

The overall numbers were still awful: the circulation at the 379 daily newspapers reporting to the ABC was down 10.6 percent, according to the organization’s Fas-Fax numbers. It’s hard to say what the decline would have been had the electronic versions not been counted. But it’s clear the change made a big difference.

About 59 newspapers in the Fas-Fax survey cited roughly 5,000 e-editions in their paid weekday circ numbers between the April-September period. The majority of those papers had significantly higher numbers of electronic subs listed versus the same period the year before—but that doesn’t mean necessarily mean more individuals were paying to read the e-paper versions. It was the way those readers were counted. Before April, the ABC only counted e-papers that charged at least 25 percent of the print version charged. In April, the ABC changed that and would allow e-subscriptions that sold for as low as a penny to be included in the circ results.

Some examples of newspapers that benefited from the ABC’s rules change:

—The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest daily, saw its average weekday circ rise 6.6 percent for a gain of roughly 11,000 subs, to 175,841, even though its print edition’s readers dropped by 12,000. Those print losses were more than offset by the inclusion of over 23,000 subscribers to its electronic version. During the same period in 2008, the Review-Journal counted only 511 digital subs.

—Pennsylvania’s York Daily Record posted 16.5 percent growth in weekday circ after April, which counted 10,073 electronic subs within a total of 55,370 paid print and digital copies. Only 42 e-editions were counted in last year’s 47,549 total subs for the Daily Record.

—Although the WSJ’s 2 million in paid circulation was up just 0.61 percent, the paper recorded a 14 percent gain in its 407,002 digital subscribers.

Most papers didn’t report gains last year, even with the inclusion of electronic copies. For example, the NYT dropped from over 1 million last year to 927,000 copies this year, marking the first time in decades that the paper’s circulation had fallen below seven figures. As for paid electronic copies, the NYT, this past year, the paper said it had 53,000 subs, more than double the 24,000 it had in during the same April-September period in ‘08. It’s not clear how many of those were counted twice.