During the first full year of John Georges’ ownership, The Advocate’s digital circulation more than doubled, while the newspaper’s print circulation increased overall. However, in the greater Baton Rouge area—the newspaper’s core market—print circulation continued its decline.
According to audited data posted online earlier this month by the Alliance for Audited Media, The Advocate’s overall print circulation increased about 2% on Sundays to more than 105,000 and by 7% during the weekdays to nearly 91,000. Those figures include editions of The New Orleans Advocate and The Acadiana Advocate, where the paper reported a combined circulation of some 33,000. In the Baton Rouge area, however, circulation was down 8% on Sundays to slightly more than 71,000 and off 6% during the week, to slightly more than 52,000
Dan Shea, The Advocate’s chief operating officer, says given nationwide declines in print circulation, the local numbers are better than expected. He also notes that changes in the paper’s pricing structure could have played a factor.
“Since we’ve taken over we had an end to a whole bunch of discounts on home delivery and we have also had a price increase on Sunday,” he says. “So, overall, I think it’s pretty remarkable.”
More noteworthy, Shea says, is the paper’s growth in a category that measures app usage. By that metric, The Advocate has more than 28,500 digital users on a daily basis—about 150% more than it reported one year ago.
“We’ve developed a whole range of apps for all our editions, so it does not surprise me to see those figures have grown,” Shea says.
However, whether app usage is the best way to measure digital circulation depends on who’s talking.
Circulation figures for The Times-Picayune—which changed its business model in 2012 by reducing its print publication cycle and focusing more heavily on its digital product, NOLA.com—show declines year over year of more than 12% in the category that measures app usage.
David Francis, executive vice president of Nola Media Group, which publishes The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com, says measuring app usage only reflects a small percentage of a paper’s digital audience. A more meaningful way to measure digital readership, he says, is to count unique visitors to the website as well as total page views.
By that measure, according to self-reported data, The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com had more than 4.3 million unique users monthly, or about 64% more than it did six months ago, and more than 40.4 million page impressions per month, or 4% more than it did six months ago.
“(The metric) that is most relevant to advertisers is total digital audience and total digital page views, regardless of platform,” says Francis. “That is what we, and virtually every other digital organization, use as a measure of success and growth.”
The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com and The Advocate have been in a battle over subscribers, advertisers and contracts to publish legal classifieds since Georges acquired The Advocate in the spring of 2013 and aggressively moved The Advocate into the Crescent City market. NOLA.com subsequently started publishing a digital edition in Baton Rouge.
Rick Edmonds, an expert on the subject with The Poynter Institute, says it’s still too soon to predict how things will shake out between the two papers. As to declines in print circulation experienced by both papers in their core markets—The Times-Picayune’s print circulation was down more than 16%— Edmonds says that isn’t surprising and is in keeping with national trends.
With respect to measuring digital readership, Edmonds says The Times-Picayune/NOLA.com has seen impressive growth and that its model appears to be working, though it’s too early to declare the model a success.
“They were not aiming for a certain result in one or two years,” he says. “Their strategy is to arrive at the right place in four or five years. We can’t say yet whether they will succeed or fail.”
Read a Business Report cover story from July on the moves by John Georges since buying The Advocate. —Stephanie Riegel
Editor’s note: This story has been revised from an earlier version to include home delivery circulation data for The Advocate‘s retail trading zone, which includes East Feliciana, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, St. Helena, Tangipahoa and West Feliciana parishes. The revised version reflects higher circulation numbers than previously reported.
