Blogs > REASONS NYT IS LOSING READERS

May 4, 2008

REASONS NYT IS LOSING READERS



Jennifer Saba, Steep Decline at 'NYT' While 'WSJ' Gains:

The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper's daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256.

-- Meanwhile, daily circulation at The Wall Street Journal grew a fraction of a percent, up 0.3% to 2,069,463 copies. At USA Today, circulation inched up 0.27%* to 2,284,219. (Correction: the original version of this story said USA Today's daily circulation was up 2.7%.)

Why?

In part because of poor coverage of a hot story as judged by it's own public editor in The Preacher’s New Pulpit. He quotes a reader approvingly:

Carol Hebb of Narberth, Pa., spoke for many when she wrote that she found the newspaper’s initial coverage “very strange.” If editors did not think Wright’s remarks were newsworthy enough to be on the front page, she asked, why did they put the review by Alessandra Stanley there? “I was very surprised that her piece was not accompanied by a ‘factual’ article reporting the content of Mr. Wright’s comments more completely and perhaps adding some meaningful context.”

Also because of it's reluctance to apologize for faulty and prejudicial coverage of Jews as revealed in anatomy of a NYT correction.



comments powered by Disqus