Local Paper Circulations Drop Again

The latest ABC figures are out detailing circulations of local newspapers, with the Leader down -6.5% overall and the Daily Post down -7.4% .

The figures detail into various editions, allowing a more local(ish) view on them. For those interested your can read the ABC’s reporting standards and methodology here. The Leader’s figures cover 124 weekday issues from December 31st to June 30th, a period of six months. Total average net circulation figures are stated per week day as:

• The Leader, Wrexham : 8,581 copies
• The Leader, Flintshire: 4,979 copies
• The Leader, Chester: 762

In total the Leader has a circulation of 14,322. A direct comparison is possible for this period last year (ABC PDF here) which showed that the Leader was circulating 15,314 copies overall, with 9,131 in Wrexham. This is down -6.4 from the same period last year.

The Daily Post’s figures cover just July this year, so a 28 day period and break down to total average net circulation figures stated as below. The Daily Post has two editions, East and West, and the ‘East’ edition is the one that generally appears in newsstands around the Wrexham area.

• Daily Post East (Sold in Wrexham) 9,562
• Daily Post West 17,907

Again, using last years figures the Daily Post East was circulating at 10,505 copies a day for the ‘East’ edition.

This gives Wrexham figures of a -8.9% drop for the Daily Post, and a -6% drop for the Leader.

As usual HoldTheFrontPage.co.uk has a national view of these stats, with only one UK regional daily showing positive figures – you can read their full breakdown here. As you will see the figures are relative compared to total circulation numbers.

Obviously it is not possible to compare websites to newspapers, periodicals, magazines and the like. We intend to give similar comparisons on an ongoing basis as we are now able to fit similar comparison periods, something that was not possible before – as we did not exist.

To try and give a Wrexham.com context for the same period quoted for the Leader above (124 editions, totaling 1,064,044 copies of the Wrexham edition) independently measured Google Analytics says 256,290 ‘people’ visited Wrexham.com 768,885 times , reading a total of 1,939,246 pages (2.52 pages per visit).

Compared to the previous period this is a cumulative 367% increase in visitors, however this is to be balanced that Wrexham.com only opened our office in Yorke St in May last year. Therefore starting from a very low number (8,000 unique visitors in the entire of February 2012!) to anything higher will give a massive percentage increase.

To compare the same periods as the Daily Post comparison, so July 2012 v July 2013, unique visits are up 146%, and pleasingly percentage of new visits was down 30%.

(Pic: A-frame that drew ridicule, including from Jeremy Vine who tweeted it to his 190,000 followers on Twitter saying “INCREDIBLE. In Wrexham, a trio of insects lose all their houses at once”)