What to make of the announcement by the Seattle Times that its
circulation has increased almost 50 percent since the Seattle
Post-Intelligencer shut down its print edition in mid-March?
Depends on whom you ask.
Alan Fisco, the Seattle Times Company’s vice president of
circulation and marketing, said in an e-mail to the newspaper’s staff
on April 27 that the jump in daily circulation (from 194,000 prior to
the P-I‘s closure to 289,000 after) represents an “incredible success.”
Others have been more cautious in their assessments—including
Times Company vice president of public affairs Jill Mackie, who, when
asked what the new numbers mean for the company, replied: “I really
can’t say.”
That seems a far more accurate assessment.
It’s clear the circulation jump is directly connected to the Times Company’s decision to automatically convert all former P-I subscriptions to current Times subscriptions. The company says that 98
percent of those automatically converted readers have elected to stay
with the Times. But that means a lot less than it might seem at first
blush. What the converted former P-I readers are currently receiving is
a substitution for something they’ve already paid for—a morning
Times for the remainder of their morning P-I subscription period. “The
real test will come when the former P-I subscribers get their bills to
continue newspaper delivery,” wrote Liz Brown, administrator for the
Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, in an April 29 posting on the
guild’s blog.
The Times Company can’t say yet what percentage of former P-I subscribers are opting to pay for new Times subscriptions once their
P-I subscription periods run out. But it’s not likely to be anything
like 98 percent. The paper’s own news report on the new circulation
figures noted that it’s typical in situations like this for the
remaining paper’s circulation to spike and then for that spike to
“erode over time.” Plus, the overall trend is toward decreasing
readership for print newspapers. Case in point: The news of the Times‘
circulation jump was offered by the Times Company as a counterpoint to
a report, released on the same day by the Audit Bureau of Circulations,
that found Times circulation declining 8 percent between October 2008
and March 2009 (a drop consistent with declines across the print-news
industry).
The Audit Bureau of Circulations survey couldn’t reflect the impact
of the P-I‘s mid-March closure because it concluded just after the P-I went under. By releasing their own internal circulation numbers showing
the Times had benefited from the P-I‘s closure over the last month, the
Times was trying to make the point that the media landscape has shifted
in its favor. It clearly has, and the paper would be silly not to point
that out. But even Mackie suggests it’s not necessarily going to be a
permanent change. “It’s premature to draw conclusions from it,” she
said. “We’re pleased—very pleased—with what we’ve seen so
far, but it isn’t necessarily a statement about the future.” 
