Circulation Shrinkage, Online Growth

By Marcus Gilmer in Miscellaneous on Apr 26, 2010 9:00PM

Some negative news for the print side of things for the city's two big papers. Crain's reports today that both the Tribune and the Sun-Times saw decreases in circulation greater than the national average during the six month period covering the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010. The Tribune saw a 9.8 percent decrease in weekday subscriptions, down to 452,145. Meanwhile, the Sun-Times saw an even sharper drop at 14 percent to 268,803. Both saw smaller drops for Sunday subscriptions: the Tirb down 7.5 percent to 794,350 and the Sun-Times down 2.7 percent to 247,416. Nationwide, weekday subscriptions fell 8.7 percent overall and Sunday subscriptions dipped 6.5 percent. The only top 25 paper to see an increase was the Wall Street Journal, which saw just a 0.5 percent bump.

If there's been one bright spot for the Tribune, it's been the new Chicago Now blog network which has been debated around these parts plenty and was just featured at TechCrunch. The blog network - which has grown even bigger to over 300 blogs - registered 15 million views in March (an average of around 50,000 views per blog).