The Bolton News, Lancashire Telegraph and The Doncaster Star are among the newspapers showing the biggest drops in circulation during the first half of this year.
According to the figures released today by the industry body, Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) the 73 UK regional daily and Sunday newspapers listed in its data lost sales by an average of 13.5 per cent year on year in the first half of 2014.
Some of the northern titles have taken the biggest hits which come at a time that some have also significantly increased their cover prices.
They include:
- The Doncaster Star, published by Johnston Press, is an edition of the Sheffield Star and fell 28.8 per cent to just over 1,000 copies a day.
- Newsquest’s Lancashire Telegraph (circ. 13,092) down 28.4%.
- The Bolton News also saw a 28.2% fall to a circulation of 12,351.
- Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Sunday Sun (circ. 30,214) -17.5%.
- Leeds – Yorkshire Evening Post 23959 -17.2%.
- Teesside Evening Gazette 26,845 -14.9%.
- Newcastle Chronicle down by 13.1% to 35,796.
- Darlington – The Northern Echo 30735 -12.7%.
Those bucking the double digit drop change include the Manchester Evening News (circ.70,458), down 1.7%, and in Leeds , The Yorkshire Post (31,022) down 9.2%.
The new Sunday edition of the Liverpool Echo, launched by the Trinity Mirror title in February, saw an average circulation in June of 21,673.
But it’s not all doom and gloom for some, the same data shows that regional newspapers have enjoyed a boom in online readership in the last six months, with websites owned by Local World and Newsquest becoming more popular than rival Johnston Press’ for the first time.
