Down Again: New Maine Circulation Figures
The slide continues: The Audit Bureau of Circulations released its latest numbers on Maine newspapers on May 8. The circulation figures for the six months ending March 31, 2012, offer a hint of good news for the Maine Sunday Telegram, but little comfort to any other paper.
The MaineToday Media-owned Telegram saw its weekly circulation decline by less than one percent, from 76,715 in 2011 to 76,015 this year. That’s the smallest decrease for that paper in at least five years.
The news was not so positive at MaineToday’s Portland Press Herald. While still the state’s largest daily, the Press Herald lost seven percent of its readership in the past twelve months, dropping from an average circulation each day of 50,981 to 47,326. The drop was the largest recorded by ABC for any Maine paper and may be attributed, at least partially, to a cover price increase last year from seventy-five cents to a dollar.
The Bangor Daily News held its price steady for most of the survey period, so the shrinkage of four and a half percent for its weekday paper and two percent for its weekend edition might have been worse. The BDN now sells an average of 45,180 Monday through Friday – down from 47,325 last year – and 52,695 on Saturday – a dip from 53,868 in 2011.
MaineToday’s Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel haven’t submitted figures to the bureau in about five years, but the new ownership did so this time. To no one’s surprise, both papers have lost considerable ground since they were last audited in 2007. The KJ went from a daily average of 14,903 papers sold in ’07 to just 10,792 today. The Sunday version sells 11,343 in 2012, compared to 14,089 five years ago. The Sentinel showed a similar pattern. It went from 19,614 in 2007 to 13,922 this year for its daily paper. On Sundays, the drop was from 18,300 (2007) to 14,029 (2012).
The state’s other two dailies, the Times Record in Brunswick and the Journal Tribune in Biddeford, both owned by Sample Media, didn’t submit figures to ABC this time around.
The history of the future: I was a little surprised no Maine newspaper covered the May 7 conference in Portland on the future of Maine’s newspapers (although the Bangor Daily News Web site offered live streaming of the event). The only news outlet that did a story turned out to be the Maine Wire, the Web site run by the conservative think tank the Maine Heritage Policy Center.
According to its story (there’s no byline), it doesn’t appear that anybody said anything very revealing about how to reverse the fortunes of daily papers. Portland Newspaper Guild president Tom Bell did, however, do a decent comedy routine.
Rolling Stone: The Bangor Daily News has hired Matthew Stone as its new State House reporter, replacing Eric Russell, who is defecting to the Portland Press Herald. Stone is a former Kennebec Journal staff writer, who most recently has been working as a consultant for the Maine Department of Education.
Al Diamon can be emailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.
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Trust
Here is something that should have been the basis for the discussion at future of Maine news conference:
http://pressthink.org/2012/04/rosens-trust-puzzler-what-explains-falling...
I had an interesting experience this week on twitter #mepolitics hashtag that I am a regular critic on. Anthony Ronzio @ronzio tweeted:
@projo says today (13th May) Maine is 18th for energy costs overall, but amazingly 47th for energy costs to industrial users. #mepolitics
Projo is the Providence Journal and has a fancy graphic and table on where the highest energy costs are in the USA using 2009 data from the Energy Information Administration. If you click on Maine $8.99 it does indeed say Maine is 47th.
http://www.providencejournal.com/topics/special-reports/assets/pages/ri-...
Aside. The Sun Journal has been critical of Governor LePage on energy prices so this "fact" and the fancy use of "new media" was enough to give Mr Ronzio a good excuse for his tweet.
Not being one to take anything as gospel I went to the raw data and tweeted back to Mr Ronzio the link:
.@Ronzio Table 4 residential & industrial elec price http://205.254.135.7/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_... #mepolitics
I didn't hear back from him so later tweeted the following:
.@ronzio Did you look at data on electricity prices 4 Maine industry at EIA coz doesn't match what is in Providence Journal? #mepolitics
Still no response and I went to his twitter stream to see if he'd sent any messages recently only to find out he had blocked me from seeing his tweets. Not a very effective strategy because if you sign out you can see anyone's twitter stream.
I can only think he was upset with me from when he started off in "new media" world and was doing a "Cover it Live" with Senator Collins in which I was one of the only people asking a question and asked about Senator Collins's position on the disclosure law going through Congress at the time. When he went through his interview with her and did not raise my question I was naturally miffed and told him so on twitter.
My point is that he is not the one to be responsible for developing "new media" if he's going to censor, block his critics and not do the ground work to get his facts right. Enough said.
Once again
So, once again, Al, you shoot from the hip only hitting about a tenth of your target. Appears as there there was indeed coverage of this event, even if MTM or BDN didn't cover it. Considering the specialized nature of the event, even devoting a paragraph might have been overkill though, since it really is not very general interest, hence, not really as newsworthy as a news-wonk such as yourself might portray it to be.
Newspaper Forum/MPBN
Maybe I was just hearing things in my head and not my ears, but I'm fairly sure MPBN covered the forum, if only in its top of the hour ATC newscasts. Hard to prove though, since their web archive is near impossible to search effectively.
Al - my KJ/Sentinel
Al - my KJ/Sentinel editorial page column on Wednesday, May 16, will offer my conclusions nd observations of the forum on the future of Maine newspapers. Something for you to look forward to! - george
Update and addition
I should have noted that the Lewiston Sun Journal also didn't file any circulation figures with the ABC.
Those interested in viewing video of the forum on the future of Maine newspapers can find it at:
www.sunjournal.com/multimedia/video
Al Diamon
Another update
The Portland Phoenix's Jeff Inglis posted this comprehensive and insightful overview of the newspaper forum this morning:
http://blog.thephoenix.com/BLOGS/abouttown/archive/2012/05/09/still-shak...
(Disclosure: My weekly political column runs in the Phoenix.)
Al Diamon
And another
According to a reliable source, the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel did submit their circulation numbers for auditing during those missing years, but not to the ABC. Instead, they used the Certified Audit of Circulations firm (www.certifiedaudit.com/Home/tabid/362/Default.aspx), because it was cheaper. Unfortunately, CAC doesn't make any of its figures available to the public, so the results of those years remain missing.
Al Diamon
Conflict of interest?
So, Bangor hires a state employee to cover the state house?
Al? Earth to Al...
The Maine Newspapers future forum
Actually the Sun Journal streamed the event and provided the stream to the BDN and Vox Global. If anyone's interested in watching, we posted the archive of the stream and the live chat that went on during the event.
http://www.sunjournal.com/news/approved/0001/11/30/video-future-maines-n...