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The nation’s largest newspapers overall saw a significant decline in readership once again this year. 

According to an analysis of ABC figures, for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617. For 609 papers that filed on Sunday, overall circulation dropped 3.5% to 46,771,486. The percentages are based on comparisons from the same period a year ago and represent the majority of the paper’s reporting into ABC—less than half in the country.

For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394, at least partly due to a price increase.

Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428.

Daily circulation at The Boston Globe tumbled 6.6% to 360,695 and Sunday fell about the same, 6.5% to 548,906.

The Wall Street Journal was down 1.53% to 2,011,882 daily but USA Today posted a gain of 1% to 2,293,137.

The newspapers have no one to blame but themselves.  They aren’t reaching a fraction of their potential audience.  The newspapers of this country have a complete lack of respect towards the American people.  The customers sense this and are no longer buying.

What’s kept these papers alive has been advertising revenues.  Even with declining readership they’ve been able to increase advertising revenue.  It appears that they’re getting close to charging the limit for what they’re delivering.  Once they can no longer get more money while delivering less they’ll be sunk.

Here’s a listing of the top 25 newspapers in the country. 

The local papers didn’t make the list obviously, but by digging around a bit on the Audit Bureau of Circulation’s website I was able to find that the Fargo Forum showed a daily paid circulation of 51,913 as of May 21st 2005 and a paid for circulation of 48,909 in their report dated March 31st of this year.  The comparison seems a bit to the Forum’s advantage as the figure two years ago was Monday thru Friday and the 2007 figure includes Saturday, a bigger day.  Even at that the Forum shows a 5.8% decrease over this time.

The Grand Forks Herald shows a circulation of 32,110 in Nov of 2004 but only 29,373 for March 31st of 2007.  The same problem applies with the latter figure including Saturday.  The Herald’s lost 8.5% of their readership over that time.