Not surprisingly, the circulation figures for the six months ended Sept. 30, as compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, were pretty horrible. In some cases, the declines were planned as circulation was cut to certain areas considered less important to advertisers. Interestingly, two national papers, USA Today and Wall Street Journal, were relatively flat. It could be interpreted that the remaining newspaper readers of the world are migrating to national and international news and better quality. Clearly the decline at the New York Times goes in the face of this observation. Further, as major metropolitan papers focus on more local news, it was supposed to stave off declines and provide proprietary content. The New York tabs were off big after having outperformed previously. Declines aren’t good and this biannual release is likely to be construed as another nail in the coffin for newspapers. The absolute numbers, individually and collectively, are still large and shouldn’t be ignored. That might be the nicest thing that can be said as we are still digesting just how large these declines really are.

There will likely be some bragging rights in some cities. For example, the Chicago Sun-Times was down 3.94 percent but Zell’s Chicago Tribune was down 7.75 percent.  Cablevision (NYSE: CVC) can crow with its recent acquisition of Newsday that circulation was only down 2.58 percent while the Daily News was down 7.16 percent and Murdoch’s (NWS) was down 6.25 percent. Newhouse’s papers in the top 25—Newark and Cleveland—were down 10.4 and 8.58 percent respectively. NYT’s Boston Globe was down 10.18 percent. Other big city papers suffered similarly as Philly (owned by Brian Tierney’s group) was down 11 percent, Atlanta down 13.6 percent, Houston down 11.7 percent and Dallas Morning News (BLC) was down 9.3 percent. Zell should feel good that the LA Times was only down percent.