The numbers are in and daily paid newspaper circulation continues to plummet, in a slide that can no longer be blamed on more stringent reporting rules implemented following the circ-puffing scandals two years ago.   

Simply put, fewer Americans are reading daily newspapers, and the pace that they are quitting them shows no sign of slowing down.

The average daily print circulation of 770 reporting newspapers fell to 45.4 million, down 2.5 percent from one year ago, according to an Audit Bureau of Circulation analysis of the six-month period ending March 31. The report, released yesterday, also found that Sunday circulations were down 3.1 percent, from 50 million to 48.5 million for 610 reporting newspapers.    

"Circulation is continuing to fall, as it has been since the late 1980s. But the decline does seem to be accelerating," newspaper analyst John Morton says. "Young people aren't taking up newspaper readership in near the numbers that they used to, and now we have competition from web sites, for young people and some older people.

"What newspapers are not attracting in numbers are young readers of their print editions."

The losses are about the same as those reported for the six-month period ended in September 2005, and they're a lot steeper than those reported just a year ago. For the six months ended March 31, 2005, daily circulation was down 1.9 percent, while Sunday had fallen 2.5 percent. Those declines had startled the industry after several years of 0.1 percent drops.

The sharp declines in the prior two reporting periods largely reflect the tougher reporting rules imposed by the ABC after it was revealed that Newsday, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Dallas Morning News had been inflating their circulations over recent years. But Morton says those reduced reporting levels have already worked their way through the process, so they cannot be blamed for the most recent declines.

Among different-size papers in the recent six-month period, the nation's largest and the smallest papers fared best, says John Murray, vice president for circulation at the Newspaper Association of America.

The top nine papers faced declines of 1.4 percent, and those with circulations below 25,000 declined 2 percent, he says. Least stable were large metro dailies, which he says must promote aggressively in marketplaces of transient subscribers.

"The cost of acquiring a new subscriber has doubled in the past eight years," Murray says, and newspaper publishers are opting not to spend on aggressive recruitment.

Still, not all the news is grim, the NAA is quick to note. Papers are taking solace in the record numbers of readers turning to newspaper web sites for their information this year. 

Nielsen//NetRatings reports that newspaper sites averaged 56 million viewers in the first quarter of 2006, which is up 8 percent over the same period of 2005. These readers constituted 37 percent of all internet users and 58 percent of news site viewers.

In fact, 10 newspapers reported expanding their internet reach by 25 to 50 percent among adults 25-34. Salt Lake City's Deseret Morning News claimed a 48.9 percent boost in its reach among that demographic, while The Boston Globe, The Hartford Courant, The Tampa Tribune and The Seattle Times also posted healthy gains among adults 25-34 through their web sites.

According to Murray, these numbers indicate that readers are mixing and matching Web and print readership, and young readers are making that choice on a daily basis, rather than signing up for subscriptions.

Meanwhile, among the nation's 20 largest papers, five reported growth in paid weekday circulation over last year. No. 1-ranked USA Today's daily circulation was up .09 percent, to 2,272,815.

The New York Times’ daily paid circulation rose 0.5 percent to 1,142,464. The Los Angeles Times fell 5.4 percent to 851,832. The New York Daily News reported a 708,477 daily circulation, a decrease of 3.7 percent, while The New York Post's numbers also fell slightly by 0.7 percent to 673,379.

The Washington Post reported a 3.7 percent decrease in its daily print circulation to 724,242, following a 4.09 percent decline posted the previous year.

Among other top 10 papers, The Wall Street Journal's daily circulation was down 1 percent to 2,049,786 and The Chicago Tribune was up, with a 0.9 percent increase, to 579,079.

Other major metropolitan dailies took alarming tumbles: a 15.6 percent loss for the San Francisco Chronicle; 8.5 percent for The Boston Globe; and 7.3 percent for the San Jose Mercury News.