More bad news for the AJC

I wrote last week that an industry source predicted that nationwide newspaper circulation numbers would show a 5 percent decline for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Sunday edition. The source was a little optimistic.

The actual Sunday loss was 6.7 percent, declining to 523,687, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Meanwhile, daily circulation fell 2 percent, to 357,399.

When the AJC reports this, it will be with the explanation that most dailies saw plunging circulation, and that’s true. The smoke screen of explanation by the newspapers is that all of these weird things have conspired to starve them of readers, things like the Internet. What they won’t admit — especially over at the AJC — is that for years they have slashed news staffs and dumbed down their publications. Savvy readers have left.

Don’t expect the AJC to give you historical perspective. Nineteen years ago (the earliest I could dig up complete records), the combined daily circulation of Atlanta’s then two newspapers was 458,700. The Sunday edition was 650,500.

That’s a 22 percent loss for daily, 19.5 percent for Sunday. Meanwhile, from 1990 to 2006, the Atlanta metro area has added more than 2 million people, an increase of more than 67 percent. Thus, the AJC has gone from reaching about 1 in 6 potential subscribers to 1 in 14.

If you’re an advertiser, the AJC likely refers to you as “Hello, sucker.” The more circulation that vaporizes, the higher the advertising rates go (the opposite of what logic would indicate). For the billionaire Cox family owners, lost circulation is a plus. They spend less publishing the newspaper.