An old friend, a long ago staffer on the Newcastle Journal, wondered why there was no sales figure for his former paper in the latest set of ABC circulation figures, which covered the first six months of this year.
I thought I had overlooked it in my round-up yesterday and, in consulting Trinity Mirror’s website, I then realised that only 16 of the company’s 27 regional dailies received an ABC certificate for the first half of 2016.
Aside from the Journal, there were no figures for the Burton Mail, Cambridge News, the [North Wales] Daily Post, Gloucestershire Echo, Gloucester Citizen, Grimsby Telegraph, Huddersfield Daily Examiner, Western Daily Press, Western Mail and Western Morning News. Why?
My friend suspected that the Journal’s sale had fallen so low that Trinity Mirror executives were too embarrassed to have it audited.
Well, it certainly has dropped badly in recent years, but several of the other titles have done rather better, so that didn’t appear to be a relevant reason for all 11 omissions.
In fact, Trinity Mirror tell me there is an altogether less sinister explanation. The company decided that only papers it designated as “big city titles” should be audited every six months while the others in its portfolio should be audited on an annual basis.
In Newcastle-upon-Tyne therefore, the larger-selling Chronicle was chosen over the Journal. So we will have to wait until February 2017 to discover this year’s sales performances by the Journal and the other 10 titles relegated to “small city” status.
In fact, Trinity Mirror is not alone in this move. Other regional publishers have also shifted some of their titles to yearly audits. I recall one executive telling me it was a prudent cost-saving measure. These are, after all, tough times for the industry... and every little helps.
For the record, just in case you were wondering, here are the last audited sales figures for the missing 11 Trinity Mirror titles, covering their average daily sales during the six months from July to December 2015:
Burton Mail: 8,844; Cambridge News: 14,068; the [North Wales] Daily Post: 23,272; Gloucestershire Echo: 9,805; Gloucester Citizen: 10,944; Grimsby Telegraph: 18,113; Huddersfield Daily Examiner: 13,152; Newcastle Journal: 14,424; Western Daily Press: 17,544; Western Mail: 16,754; and Western Morning News: 22,266.
