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The Kansas City Star’s shell game with circulation figures

August 17, 2022 by jimmycsays

From all appearances — hiring new people and hiring a well-credentialed editorial page editor — The Star is making money, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how.

I’ve tracked The Star’s circulation figures for years, and they just keeping looking worse.

The Star’s circulation reports to the Alliance for Audited Media, a trade publication financed by the publications it serves, are a big muddle and have been for years.

I suspect the reports are intentionally confusing. Take a look…

For the six-month period ending March 31, The Star reported 14,512 paid, “digital replica” subscriptions, meaning subscriptions that give the subscriber the ability to see the print edition online.

At the same time, the paper reported 18,166 “non-replica” subscriptions, meaning, theoretically, that those subscribers could not see the print, or “e,” edition online.

But that is absurd because The Star does not sell “non-replica” subscriptions: everyone who buys a digital subscription gets the “replica,” or “e,” edition automatically.

Moreover, regardless of how the paper categorizes its subscription sales, the totals are ridiculously low for a metro area of about two million people. A very small percentage of area residents are getting any kind of KC Star product.

Print circulation is hardly worth talking about any more. As of March 31, paid Sunday print circulation was down to 45,349, 16 percent of what it was in the year 2010 — just 12 years ago — when paid Sunday circulation stood at 283,000.

I think the only reason The Star’s owner (McClatchy) continues to publish a print edition is that some people in the 70- to 90-age range are willing to pay whatever it takes to get that flimsy, light-as-air paper thrown in their yards. Some of those people don’t know how to use a computer, but a larger portion consists of those who insist — and I hear this all the time — “I just like to feel the paper in my hands.”

So far, The Star has been very willing to accommodate those suckers. And why not? Some people are paying $1,000 a year or more for a print subscription.

**

For a comparison, I checked circulation figures for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which is still owned by a newspaper company — Lee Enterprises — rather than a hedge fund, which is the situation with The Star (Chatham Asset Management, out of New Jersey).

For March 31, 2022, the P-D reported 37,610 “digital replica” subscriptions and only 3,587 “non-replica” subscriptions.

Although I’m still at a loss to know exactly what a “non-replica” subscription entails, it sounds to me like the Post-Dispatch is being much more forthcoming. By my reading, The Star had 14,512 paid digital subscriptions as of March 31 and the Post-Dispatch had 37,610.

At The Star, sorry to say, circulation has become a shell game, with the goal being to hide the real numbers. They’ve been doing it for years, and I don’t expect it to change.

I’ve told people again and again, Do not take the print edition. It’s a complete rip-off. If you pine to have print in your hands every day, take a print subscription to the Sunday New York Times. There’s enough in the Sunday edition that you can pick it up every day for a week and find something new and interesting with each pass.

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Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

6 Responses

  1. on August 17, 2022 at 5:56 pm Brian

    The following paragraph:

    I’ve told people again and again, Do not take the print edition. It’s a complete rip-off. If you pine to have print in your hands every day, take a print subscription to the Sunday New York Times. There’s enough in the Sunday edition that you can pick it up every day for a week and find something new and interesting with each pass.
    …
    is so on target, written by a former journalist in the “newspaper” days and read by a former journalist who tries to explain to the “yunguns” what it was like when newspapers printed cash and you could wake up thinking “I love the smell of ink and paper in the morning.”


  2. on August 17, 2022 at 6:01 pm Jayson

    Oh Jim there is just no “tactile satisfaction” that comes with reading a screen. It is a guilty pleasure to hold up a newspaper to read and one I hope to continue for a while. I heartily agree with your encouragement to read the the Sunday NYT.


    • on August 17, 2022 at 6:04 pm jimmycsays

      And you’re not even 70 yet, Jayson.


  3. on August 17, 2022 at 8:51 pm Vern Barnet

    Does The Star edge into what I would consider an unethical practice of getting paid for special attention to certain enterprises, like restaurants and even some products? I’m not referring to items that are (sometimes poorly) marked as ads. What is the advertising revenue? Has the new format for the obits brought in $$ ? I am shocked that the circulation is only 16% of what it was just 12 years ago. I got so fed up with the poor subscription process that, with both reluctance and anger, I quit and now read the print paper free every day on line at my desk through the library. I sometimes flirt with the idea of sending in a donation to encourage the great writing that still sometimes appears, but I realize it would go to Chatham and get sad all over again about the recumberent paper I used to promote to the interfaith community. (My organization once gave it an award, 2001 — when Brisbane was publisher.)

    And yes, I subscribe to the NYTimes (I think I started in the late 60s) and the WaPo also in recent years.


  4. on August 18, 2022 at 9:08 am Tim Kridel

    I’d love to see a pie chart that breaks down the digital subs by rate. The Star has some dirt-cheap offers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, such as $20/year. What percentage are on that? And how many renew at a higher rate?

    Some Gannett papers have been selling two-year digital subscriptions for $22, such as Green Bay and Columbia, MO. Eventually those chickens come home to roost: https://www.poynter.org/business-work/2022/gannett-lays-off-journalists-after-dismal-second-quarter-results


    • on August 18, 2022 at 9:23 am jimmycsays

      I saw that story about the Gannett layoffs. Can McClatchy be far behind?



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