Free Spanish language paper Al Dìa (Dallas) has increased its circulation last week with 80,000 copies every Wednesday and Saturday. The copies will be mostly home-delivered in the greater Dallas area.
On the other four days, Al Dìa will distribute 40,000 copies. The paper is published by Belo (Dallas Morning News).
The recently launched Palo Alto Daily Post increased circulation to 16,500 - stacking more papers in boxes that were empty the earliest. (Free-daily blog)
The paper started in May with 15,000 and expected this to rise to 20,000 before the end of the year.
In Palo Alto the Daily Post, competes with the - also free - Palo Alto Daily News.
Free US daily The Examiner introduced a totally new distribution model last week with home delivery on Thursdays and Sundays, only rack-distribution on weekdays and skipping the Saturday edition.
There is probably no newspaper that prints such different numbers of copies on different days: 835,000 on Sundays, 735,000 on Thursday and only 230,000 on Monday-Wednesday and Friday (and none on Saturdays). (more…)
Editorsweblog published the top 10 of paid and free newspapers from the 2007 publication World Press Trends today. Their no. 1 position, however, is occupied by the Canadian Metro with 990,000 daily copies although the paper itself claimed a circulation of at least 200,000 lower.
The circulation for Quebecor’s 24 hours/heures on the other hand seems to be too low: it’s 705,000 instead of 240,000 (that would be the circulation of the Toronto edition only).
My list, therefore, is somewhat different.
All the US/Canadian/Mexican circulation data, however, are not audited officially by a national recognized auditing organization.
World Press Trends also features the Dominican free daily El Expreso. Information on this paper, however, is very hard to find. It was closed down after the Baninter Bank went bankrupt in 2003, but perhaps it has resurfaced. The paper is not mentioned in any list of Dominican newspapers anymore.
Notwithstanding the fact that no less than four free titles compete on the Dutch national market, the total circulation has gone up in the first quarter of 2008, compared to 2007.
Metro is the free daily with the highest circulation in the Netherlands, second only after De Telegraaf. Spits is fourth after paid paper AD. De Pers and DAG are 5th and 6th.
The differences in readership (2007), however, are more substantial than the differences in circulation. Also here Metro is the winner with 1.9 million daily readers. Spits has no less than 3.9 readers per copy.
Free dailies lead the way in Portuguese circulation data for the first months of 2008. Global Notícias distributed 200,000 copies a day, which made it the paper with the highest circulation in the country.
Destak is second with 174,000 before Metro with a distribution of 170,000 a day.
The first paid paper is Correio da Manha with 118,000 copies a day before Jornal de Noticias with a circulation of 99,000. Sports papers O Jogo and Record published no circulation data.
Free quality daily Meia Hora distributes 71,000 copies while free business paper OJE has a circulation of 23,000. (APTC through Publicitas newsletter)
Analyzing the average circulation over the first five months of 2008 of the four national free dailies in Spain, it’s clear that three of them are very close in terms of circulation.
20 Minutes circulated 1,074,000 copies on average, Qué! 1,064,000 copies and ADN 1,041,000 copies. Only Metro is lagging behind with 899,000 copies. (PRNoticias)
What really counts, however, is readership. 20 Minutos is by far the best read free daily, followed by Qué!, Metro and ADN (see previous post).
In the beginning of June I wrote about the World Association of Newspapers 2007 circulation data. In their list of the six free dailies with the highest circulation, I spotted two major mistakes, inflating the total circulation of those six papers with 1.1 million only.
I also casted some doubts on reliability of the WAN data, as they had an unusual way of calculating yearly circulation. Their method until 2007 meant that circulation of free dailies was inflated. On June 4 I published my own top 10 of free dailies.
Tatiana Repkova, Director of Research and Information Management of the World Association of Newspapers in Paris reacted on June 13 under that post.
She replied that WAN corrected the circulation of the Italian free daily Leggo from 1.95 million to 1 million after my comments and that the 2008 edition of World Press Trends uses a more reliable way of counting circulation, whereby papers are only counted for the months they were published.
The correction, however, is only 50% satisfactory, as the issue of the inflated Canadian Metro circulation is not addressed. According to WAN Metro Canada circulates 990,000 copies - Metro itself claims only 790,000 copies. The ‘average’ WAN now uses would actually lead to an even lower circulation as two editions only started in March and April.
My main problem with the data, however, is the suggested exactness (+3.65%). Even in the top 10 of free newspapers, four titles are not officially audited, so we have to trust the data provided by publishers. Their reputation in this area is not undisputed. A telling example was the Italian free daily EPolis, claiming a circulation of more than 900,000 - when readership was measured it was only 515,000, indicating that the circulation was somewhat ‘optimistic’. In the top 10, there are three Italian free papers.
Also in countries like Finland, Austria, Canada, Korea, the Ukraine, Turkey, Slovenia, Russia, Serbia, Macedonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Croatia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, the USA, Australia, China, Israel, Singapore and Taiwan free papers are not audited or the auditing data is not available to the public. Even paid papers are not officially audited in many countries.
Many publishers, however, don’t care too much about circulation as readership is more important to convince advertisers.
Circulation of newspapers is still an important indication and the WAN World Press Trends is a valuable source, but handling the data more carefully would be a great idea.
The Spanish-language daily Al Día will increase distribution of its free editions on two days a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays, to 120,000 from 40,000. The change will place in late July of this year. (Marketing Y Medios)
The model resembles that of the Examiner (San Francisco, Washington, Baltimore). This title will cut down home-delivery on most days and concentrate on Wednesdays and Sundays.
Al Día (by Belo) was launched in 2005 as a paid paper but moved to mostly free circulation in 2006.
Polish circulation data for February-April 2008 show that Metro (by Agora) with more than half a million distributed copies is the second paper in the country.
Fakt (owned by German publisher Axel Springer) is first with 523,000 on average over these three months. Metro had a distribution of 511,000.
Gazeta Wyborcza (Agora) is third with 427,000 paid copies.
After the closure of Metropol (Metro International) the Agora Metro is the only free daily in the country.