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Both P-I, Times report declines in circulation

By Bill Richards
Special to The Seattle Times

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Pressured by restrictions in telemarketing and a continuing lag in Seattle's economy, both The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer have reported declines in circulation from a year ago.

The Times' daily paid circulation for the six-month period ended March 31 showed a drop of about 1 percent, or 2,165 papers, from the same six-month period a year ago, according to figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The bureau tracks circulation for the newspaper industry.

The falloff, to 237,303, was the first circulation drop for The Times in two years.

The P-I recorded an even more substantial decline, falling by nearly 3 percent to 150,901 papers over the same time frame.

The Sunday paper, which is published by The Times with one section compiled by the P-I, saw its circulation drop nearly 2 percent, to 465,830 copies.

Circulation helps determine the rates a newspaper charges for advertising. On average, daily circulation dropped during the six-month period for half the nation's largest 38 papers, according to an analysis by the Newspaper Association of America.

The industry trade group said average daily circulation for the 836 papers tallied by the Audit Bureau fell by one-tenth of a percent.

In an internal Times memo last month, Carolyn Kelly, the paper's president and chief operating officer, called the circulation results "somewhat disappointing." But because the results came amid curbs on telemarketing and Seattle's slow economy, "these are numbers we should all be very proud of," Kelly said.

Last year, the federal government established the National Do Not Call Registry, which took effect in October. The move severely restricts telemarketing calls to consumers who have signed up to be on the list. Those restrictions have had a widespread impact on businesses that depend on phone solicitations, including the newspaper industry.

In the same internal memo, Times officials noted that a predicted job recovery in the Seattle area has not occurred and that job growth in the region is expected to occur at a rate of less than 1 percent this year and only 1.9 percent in 2005.
 
Times spokeswoman Kerry Coughlin said yesterday that while the paper's circulation had dropped, its readership — the number of people reading a single copy of the paper — had increased by 23 percent since 1999. The Times is one of just three similarly sized metropolitan dailies to show a readership increase out of 20 surveyed by Scarborough Research, another tracking group, she said.

The number of online page views of The Times Web site also rose nearly 23 percent in the last year, Coughlin said.

"Increasingly, advertisers are looking more at readership," she said. "They want to know how many people we are reaching with their message."

Coughlin said Times officials do not believe the growth in online readers was cannibalizing the paper's traditional readership.

According to The Times' memo last month, revenue from the paper's classified advertising, a key revenue source, was down 8 percent in the first quarter of this year, compared with a similar period in 2003.

P-I Publisher Roger Oglesby also blamed the impact of the Do Not Call Registry for some of his paper's circulation slippage.

Still, Oglesby said, the P-I's online page views have climbed 37 percent in the past year.

National newspaper research indicates online publishing has not made significant inroads into more traditional circulation, Oglesby said. But, he added, "you have to think that over time, some people who get the paper online are not going to get it in print."

Still, he said, the P-I has no plans to trim its online publishing. "That is the future," said Oglesby.

The Times and P-I operate separate news and editorial staffs, and both publish daily in the mornings. Under a joint-operating agreement (JOA), The Times handles all non-news functions for both papers, including printing, distribution and marketing.

The Seattle Times Co. and the Hearst Corp., which owns the P-I, are locked in a legal struggle over the future of the JOA. In April of last year, The Times notified Hearst that, under a JOA formula, it lost money for three consecutive years, setting in motion a requirement in the agreement that both papers negotiate either an end to one paper or termination of the JOA.

Hearst, which has challenged The Times' losses, sued to block the negotiations, saying it wants to continue to publish the P-I under the JOA. If the JOA were disbanded, Hearst says, the P-I cannot publish.

In March, a three-judge state Court of Appeals panel reversed a lower-court decision and ruled in favor of The Times. Hearst has petitioned to take its case before the state Supreme Court.

Bill Richards is a freelance writer hired on a special contract by The Seattle Times to cover events involving the joint-operating agreement with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He can be reached at brichards@seattletimes.com