Editor and Publisher reports that my two local papers, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times, under a joint operating agreement (JOA) both saw increases in their paper circulation numbers this year.
Assuming that the recent death of the King County Journal is not wholly to blame for the jumping numbers, this is good news because it indicates two important things:
- People, at least in Seattle, are still interested in reading the news
- People like to be subscribers, not just readers
But it’s bad news for another reason entirely:
- Newspaper brass could use this as an excuse to stick their head in the sand and continue to ignore the internet
The print daily as it currently exists is almost certainly dead in the water. Rising circulation numbers indicates an interest to read the news, not an affinity for the method of delivery.
Eat Sleep Publish is a Seattle-based blog that explores the difficulties and opportunities currently facing the publishing industry. 
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Actually, I do enjoy reading an actual, physical, tangible newspaper. I even enjoy having to step outside in the morning to pick it up from the driveway. I like being able to see the whole page. I like being able to get out a pencil to give the puzzles a try. I like being able to tear out an article or photo to save. If I spill coffee or tea on it, it’s not a big deal. Call me old-fashioned…
Oh I do, too, but I think that those of us who would pay for the paper edition for that reason will dwindle to the point where it become economically unfeasible for papers to justify the cost of printing and distributing a paper version of their product.
I don’t think that the ultimate solution should be (hopefully won’t be) a purely online offering. I think we need something that displaces the costs of classical mass distribution without introducing the weird “mouse and keyboard” interface to the medium.
I think the Kindle and the iPhone are a lot closer to newspapers in 30 years than nytimes.com is.
So I guess my point is not that people don’t like the paper version, but that rising circulation numbers don’t prove that people do like the paper version.
The Seattle Times had an interesting story on this: The reason both papers were up was due to sales of the e-Edition (PDF format that reproduces each page of the paper as it appears in print). The story is here. The e-Edition subscriptions increased enough to push total sales up. Without the e-Edition, the Times says, both papers would have been down again.