Black and White and Read by Fewer

An industrywide circulation drop of 1.9% for the six months ended in March was one of the biggest in recent times and continued a fairly consistent two-decade decline. Daily newspaper circulation has fallen nearly 9 million from its 1984 peak of 63.3 million, while the U.S. population has grown by about 58 million. The country lost 306 daily papers, 17% of the total, between 1960 and last year.

A Media Management Center study reached an even more alarming conclusion regarding younger readers -- estimating that by 2010, only 9% of those in their 20s will read a newspaper every day.

A dramatic flight of advertising has followed the circulation losses -- with classified ad revenue dropping 15% from 2000 to 2004 -- dragged down largely by an almost 50% decline in employment advertising.

Yet most newspaper companies remain profitable -- with margins in 2004 ranging from 15% to 28%. And newspaper executives have fought to highlight more hopeful news about their business.

Last week the Newspaper Assn. of America announced a new twice-yearly statistical analysis that tracks "readers" -- the total number of people viewing papers, both printed and online -- rather than the smaller number of "subscribers." The trade group hired a phone-survey firm that concluded, for example, that 2.4 million people read the Los Angeles Times at least once a week, compared with weekday circulation of about 908,000 a day. It also found that in the difficult 18-to-34-year-old demographic, which includes many readers who have fled to the Internet, more than two-thirds continue to read a newspaper sometime during a given week.

The association also presented information from Nielsen/NetRatings that showed the enormous audiences available online, including, for example, 12.8 million unique individuals who visited the New York Times Web pages in a recent month and the 9.7 million who looked at the USA Today website.

As yet unanswered at most newspapers is how to make money with online readers -- either by increasing ad revenue or finding a way to get Web viewers to pay for content they were accustomed to getting free.

Looking toward the more distant horizon, industry observers range from doomsayers, who see print news disappearing in a few years, to optimists who believe the business will find ways to sell itself online.