Here are the most recent circulation numbers. Notable:
Los Angeles Times, 815,723, down 4.2 percent
The Washington Post, 699,130, down 3.5 percent
Chicago Tribune, 566,827, down 2.1 percent
Dallas Morning News, 411,919, down 14.3 percent
Newsday, Long Island, 398,231, down 6.9 percent
Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 345,252, down 4.9 percent
The papers are generally run by the same people who have always run them, and they simply lack the skills sets to adapt to the new media environment. Even the idea of circulation numbers divorced from online traffic is a telling oversight.
Why not have a counter on the websites of these papers, and separate counters on every story? From such a database would emerge the key facts of journalism's situation and the stuff of figuring out what journalism needs to provide to survive. This is not to say that news must be reader-driven, but that readers matter and the deep indifference to them over decades is now manifesting itself.
The New York Post went up 7.6 percent. It is possible to increase print circulation, and it is very easy to develop new products online, but the folks running the papers are not the ones to do it.