There’s a little good news for a change down among the details of March’s new ABC-audited print circulation and digital reach results. Of course you have to duck and weave to find it – but quality papers have something to feel modestly pleased about. The Sun-Mirror-Star tabloid category is down 5.87% year on year (with the Mirror taking a 12.89% hit). The Mail and Express are both down year on year (6.79% at the Express) and month on month. But every one of the quality dailies did better in March than in February: they’re up 2.48% overall, which also embraces a 0.22% total rise on March 2015.
Not salvation – but not exactly freefall either (and largely replicated in the quality Sunday market month on month, too). Popular papers aren’t very popular, to be sure, but quality is a tad more resilient.
That’s the last of the print Independent on these figures, of course. But modest hopefulness continued as independent.co.uk, preparing to voyage alone, pushed up its unique browser count to a monthly 63 million worldwide, up 17% on February. It says it’s now able to employ 90 core journalists, some 15 more than projected. Though here, as so often elsewhere, percentages matter rather less than the revenue figures involved – and they follow rather later.
