Forward Into the Decline

On the heels of Monday's announcement of continuing serious declines in newspaper circulation, I checked out the numbers for our own Commercial Appeal:

Publication Name Frequency Circulation Type Total Circulation*
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) WED M DLY 159,944
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) FRI M DLY 167,290
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) SUN DLY 216,191
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) SAT M DLY 176,536
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) OPT M (M-SAT) DLY 164,680
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) TUE M DLY 160,455
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) MON M DLY 161,206
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) THU M DLY 162,550
COMMERCIAL APPEAL, MEMPHIS (SHELBY CO.) AVG M (M-F) DLY 162,327

Note that Sunday's circulation is down from last March's 228,761 (#55 on the list). This is also further down from the one year ago figure of 237,901. That's a drop of 21,710 readers, or 9.1%.

Ouch.

I've lost the link now, but I also saw somewhere that the average age for newspaper readers is now 55.

The Commercial Appeal is trying to make changes, but they are old-school journalism centered, not the Internet-adapted strategies that seems to be working for some newspapers. There's a fundamental product switch going on here. You can make the snazziest, sharpest buggy whip in town, but if everyone is buying cars, you'll only sell so many.

Chris Peck seems to still want to make buggy whips.