By: Mark Fitzgerald Among the reasons The McClatchy Co. is so admired in the newspaper industries was its astonishing record of growing chain-wide circulation year after year for 20 consecutive years.
That streak came to a crash with last year's September Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) reporting period. With the release of Monday's FAS-FAX of publisher's statement, McClatchy is working on a new streak--this time losing circulation.
According to an E&P analysis of the Monday through Friday circulation averages for its 12 dailies, McClatchy newspapers lost a total of 3.0% of circulation compared to the same reporting period in 2005. Weekday circulation totaled 1,383,048, down 47,816 copies on average from the year-ago period. (The calculation did not include any of the papers McClatchy is getting in its not-yet-completed acquisition of Knight Ridder Inc.)
The circulation slip represented an acceleration from last year, when daily circ was down 1%.
McClatchy's biggest individual loser was its flagship Sacramento Bee, which dropped 4% to 293,189. McClatchy?s other Bee papers were down as well, with the Fresno dailies falling 2% to 162420, and the Modesto paper down 4%. Minneapolis Star Tribune dropped 2.9% to an average 362,964.
All four of McClatchy's Dixie dailies were gainers in this FAS-FAX, led by The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., which bumped its circulation up 1.2% to 178,210. In South Carolina, the Beaufort Gazette gained 0.3% and The Island Packet in Hilton Head was up 3.0% .
McClatchy's Washington state properties were modest losers in the period. The Tacoma News Tribune slipped 3.4% to 125,228, while the Tri-Cities Herald in Pasco was virtually flat, losing 232 copies on average to 42,030.
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An earlier version of this story included several miscalculations, which have been corrected.
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