The Orange County Register saw weekday circulation fall for the six months through Sept. 30, but by how much depends on how you slice it.
Monday through Friday circulation at the Santa Ana-based daily was off 3.2% from a year earlier, according to the Schaumburg, Ill.-based Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Sunday circulation fell 3.6%.
The decline looks worse for Monday through Friday circulation than it does by another measurement, said N. Christian Anderson III, publisher of the Register.
In the past, the paper has reported daily circulation as Monday through Saturday. By that measure, the paper is off 0.9% for the six months through September, Anderson said. The six-day measurement is more meaningful to advertisers, he said.
Nationally, the largest newspapers saw a 2.6% decline in daily circulation and 3.1% on Sundays.
Weekday circulation at the Los Angeles Times, the region’s largest paper and part of Chicago’s Tribune Co., fell 3.8% in the most recent period. Sunday circulation declined 3.5%.
The San Fernando Valley-based Daily News, which also fared better than most in the March period, reported a 5.1% weekday drop through September. Sunday circulation was off 2.6%.
The numbers are part of an ongoing slide for daily papers. Executives at the Register and Los Angeles Times stress readership,how many people are reading a given copy,versus how many people are buying papers.
