A look at newspaper circulation in hockey markets

by James Mirtle on Apr 27, 2009 12:34 PM CDT Comment 7 comments

The Audit Bureau of Circulations' newspaper circulation and audience FAS-FAX report came out today, and it offers an ugly portrait of newspaper readership in the U.S. over the past six months. Circulation is down, in some cases way, way down.

What's interesting is the same can't be said of newspapers in Canada:

Overall, the Canadian newspaper market as audited by ABC fares much better than the United States, where only two of the top 25 dailies are seeing an increase in circulation, and it is by less than 1%.

I don't have an answer for why that is, but when it comes to sports coverage, it doesn't appear as though there's a major hit coming in this country. Many papers actually increased their circulation over this time period, with only the National Post falling significantly. The Globe and Mail's fell by 2.7 per cent.

It's a different story in the U.S., where several papers that provide hockey coverage had declines of more than 10 per cent in the six-month period. Here are some of the harder hit ones:

New York Post -20.6%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -19.9%
Newark Star-Ledger -16.8%
Miami Herald -15.8%
San Francisco Chronicle -15.7%
New York Daily News -14.3%
Philadelphia Inquirer -13.7%
Boston Globe -13.7%

The average U.S. paper's circulation fell 7 per cent, which ABC says is "a record rate." Combine that with advertising rates that have fallen sharply due to the recession, and the trend could definitely be bad news for NHL coverage in some of these markets.

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It seems like hockey coverage is the first to go in papers regarding sports coverage. The NHL really is the first sport in my estimation where the fans have gone en masse on line. Can this actually be monetized though? Who knows, but with circulation declining, it certainly will make the over transfer to online resources complete.

The population of Pominville keeps rising!

by Blackcapricorn on Apr 27, 2009 1:25 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Having read the papers in Detroit, Washington and New York, I can say that the Atlanta Journal Constitution is simply not a very good read over the last 10 years. The news section is amazingly uninformative.

by The Falconer on Apr 27, 2009 4:28 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

The Detroit papers have historically been among the better newspapers in America, but wow, their sports sections were terrible. Someone should ran Mitch Albom over with a bus years ago.

I keep seeing people talking about how the death of the newspapers is so terrible, we should be crying a river for these in-trouble institutions, etc. etc. but really, I couldn’t care less. Most newspapers suck. Period. End of story. National news is recycled AP content, the sports pages are written by geniuses like Woody Paige, the format itself is slow, and the entire industry has been slow to evolve and adapt. More than that, for the most part, the industry has, instead of looking inwards for solutions, merely pointed the finger at blogs and such and cried about how its not fair. That fact alone has really pushed me towards total apathy for the newspapers, because they’re crapping on the things I like, and more than that, they’re crapping on superior sources of information and analysis. Newspapers have done nothing to gain my sympathy or support, and are actively doing everything they can to make me actively dislike them. Tough noogies for the newspapers that go out of business then, I say.

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by IAmJoe on Apr 27, 2009 5:50 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

Perhaps this will push newspapers back in the direction of original reporting and investigative journalism, which seems to have waned over the years.

I will also argue that whatever else you say about the papers, no one can provide what a beat reporter can.

SNN Sports - A theoretical Oilers blog (i.e. theoretically, I write stuff there)

by Doogie2K on Apr 28, 2009 9:18 AM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

San Francisco Chronicle

It’s a huge stretch to suggest that the Chronicle provides hockey coverage. They send nobody to Sharks road games; in fact, they often rely on the AP for “coverage” of home games.

by Kevin2 on Apr 28, 2009 8:23 PM CDT reply actions 0 recs

Yeah, I realize that was a borderline one, although they did have a writer covering the team in the playoffs.

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by James Mirtle on Apr 28, 2009 10:21 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs

I was actually wondering what was happening to the San Jose Mercury News, who do give the Sharks a fair bit of coverage. They weren’t on the list in the article you cited, though. As far as I know, their circulation is dropping as well.

by Kevin2 on Apr 29, 2009 12:10 PM CDT up reply actions 0 recs