Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Daily circulation at Charlotte Observer falls 11%

Daily circulation at the Charlotte Observer fell 11% to 187,633 in the last 6 months. That decline is worse than the 7.1% national average.

Publisher Ann Caulkins touts online readership:

“We're gaining readership,” said Observer publisher Ann Caulkins. “We know people who don't read us in print are reading us online. We have more readership than we've ever had in the history of the Charlotte Observer.”

Caulkins said that part of the circulation decrease was because unprofitable delivery routes were dropped in outlying areas and newsstand prices were raised in some distant circulation zones.

Jeff Taylor says Caulkins doesn't have a 21st century plan:

So what’s the 21st century plan to get revenue from all those online eyeballs? Well, in the 19th century you would throw ads at them and/or sell them subscriptions. And that is Ann’s plan as well.

Nothing remotely forward-looking, nothing to decouple content from “pages” and “ads” — just throw a pay wall up and hope the advertisers want to pay twice to get in — and don’t mind having no idea if they connect with eye-balls actually interested in their product.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Here are how major Carolinas newspapers fared in the latest circulation report released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The Charlotte Observer
Circulation
Change, year to year

Daily
187,633
-11%

Sunday
244,494
-7%

Print/Online
1.07 million
+8%


The News & Observer (Raleigh)

Daily
156,909
-11%

Sunday
205,298
-3%

Print/Online
854,200
+4%


The State (Columbia)

Daily
96,737
-4%

Sunday
122,539
-12%

Print/Online
358,400
na


Post and Courier (Charleston)

Daily
96,005
-4%

Sunday
106,192
-4%

Print/Online
376,400
na


News & Record (Greensboro)

Daily
81,062
-4%

Sunday
96,164
-5%

Print/Online
413,900
+2%


Winston-Salem Journal

Daily
74,804
-9%

Sunday
87,965
-5%

Print/Online
358,356
-3%


Source: ABC Newspaper FAS-FAX, subject to audit.

Anonymous said...

“We're gaining readership,”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

Well of course you are! There, there dear, there there. Noogies for all.

John Altevogt said...

This is the standard McClatchy line. The Star claims to have millions (literally, I believe) readers online. Their only problem is ad revenue, according to them.

It's easy to get the official line out of them. All you have to do is go onto just about any of their blogs and mention that no one is reading and you'll get the official company sermon on the subject.

The other line that all the papers seem to spout is "We're highly profitable. McClatchy is taking some of our profits to support their other papers that are losing money."

What they forget is that there are sites like this where people can get together and compare stories. Certainly all of them can't be highly profitable and gaining millions of readers if the whole chain is going down the tubes.

Anonymous said...

It's difficult to imagine how management continues to thrive at an McClatchy news daily. It defies any legitimate reasoning. They do not have a plan that will be able to settle any more debt that is owed to the unwitting investors and creditors that brokered the KRI deal. Perhaps a bailout from the dems? Ain't gonna happen, man.