By: Jennifer Saba All that recent turmoil that has rocked the locally-owned Santa Barbara News-Press for over a year -- the high profile firings and resignations, the legal to-and-fro, the boycott of the paper sparked by employees -- seems to have affected circulation.
The News-Press, controlled by Wendy P. McCaw, experienced one of the industry's biggest drops in daily copies: Monday through Friday, circulation plunged 14.1% to 33,755 for the six-month period ending September 2007, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
What's more, the biggest decline occurred in the category most desired by advertisers and by the same token, publishers. Individually-paid circulation, for more than 50% of the price, cratered 15.8%. The News-Press lost 5,549 copies in that category.
The paper ratcheted up discounting -- that category is up 68% though it was only a difference of 147 copies from the same period a year ago.
On Sunday, the trends mirrored that of weekday circulation: copies at the News-Press plummeted 14.8%.
At the Block family's Blade in Toledo, Ohio, where a nine-month lockout of some of the paper's unions ended in May, daily circulation decreased just 2.4% (the industry average) to 120,125 but Sunday tumbled 7.9% to 150,019 copies. On Sunday, the paper lost 13,930 copies in the more than 50% paid category.
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