The Audit Bureau of Circulations, the non-profit agency that keeps track of how many newspapers are sold, has released its latest report on Maine papers covering the six months ending March 30, 2010.

Notable by its absence from the ABC list are The Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram, which for the first time in recent memory didn’t file figures with the bureau.

That may have something to do with wanting to avoid bad publicity. According to a knowledgeable source at MaineToday Media, the company that owns the papers, “the unofficial figures are not good …. Apparently weather kids and Snapshots aren’t enough to stop the decline.”

Between 2007 and 2009 (when MaineToday bought the Telegram and Press Herald), the Sunday paper lost about 20 percent of its paid circulation, dropping from over 115,000 copies per week to a little more than 92,000. In the same timeframe, the daily paper saw its numbers decline from an average of nearly 73,000 to less than 61,000, off about 17 percent.

If the source is correct, that trend seems to be continuing.

MaineToday’s other two dailies, the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, stopped being audited by ABC a couple of years ago, as did the Lewiston Sun Journal.

As for other Maine newspapers, the Bangor Daily News saw its numbers continue their downward spiral. The daily paper lost more than 3,000 readers from a year ago, about 6 percent of its circulation, which is now just under 50,000 a day. The weekend paper took a bigger hit, shedding 4,000 paid customers, a 6.6 percent drop to about 56,500 papers a week.

The Times Record in Brunswick was no exception to the trend. It went from a daily circulation of 8,673 a year ago to 8,091 now, a loss of 6.7 percent. The weekend edition dipped from 10,366 in 2009 to 9,583 in 2010, down more than 7.5 percent.

The Journal Tribune in Biddeford skipped the audit in 2009. Its daily circulation of 4,752 this year is off 35 percent from 2007’s 7,307. Weekends are down 33 percent over the past three years from 8,825 in 2007 to 5,872 in 2010.

In October, all newspapers that hold second-class mailing permits are required by the U.S. Postal Service to publish figures on the number of copies they print, sell, and give away. Although the standards for determining those figures vary slightly from the ABC rules, those forms will likely provide the next opportunity to find out what’s happening at the MaineToday papers. Another ABC report covering the six months ending Sept. 30 will be released in late November.

Al Diamon can be e-mailed at aldiamon@herniahill.net

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