Down East 2013 ©
Down, but not much: The Lewiston Sun Journal has published its annual report to the U.S. Postal Service (required to get cheap mailing rates), and it indicates the newspaper’s steady decline in circulation over the last ten years may be easing. The Sun Journal reported average daily paid or requested distribution of 31,006 copies this year, down about 1.5 percent from 2008. That’s a distinct improvement over the past few years when the numbers have consistently fallen by 5 percent or more annually.
The news was not so good for the paper’s Sunday edition, which sold an average of 30,435 papers each week, down 3 percent from the previous year. But even that’s still an improvement over the decline between 2007 and 2008, when 4 percent of circulation vanished.
In the past decade, the Sun Journal has lost about a quarter of its customers.
As other papers report their figures for 2009, I’ll try to post them here. If you spot the filing form in your favorite publication (they’re often stuck in obscure places), please let me know.
Links:
[1] mailto:aldiamon@herniahill.net