Boston Herald’s Print Circulation Falling Faster than Globe’s

As the Boston Globe’s print newspaper circulation continues to decline at the industry average of 12% year-over-year, the Boston Herald’s print circulation is falling more than twice as fast, raising questions about how much longer the city’s second-largest daily can hang on.

The Boston Business-Journal reports the most recent numbers filed with the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) show The Herald’s average weekday circulation for the six-month period that ended March 31 was 22,032. That’s down 28.6% from the same period a year earlier — much faster than the 12% average for newspapers nationwide that the Pew Research Center reported in 2019.

In fact, it’s the same year-over-year rate of decline the paper reported last fall, showing that the newspaper still hasn’t recovered from the worst effects of the pandemic.

At fault then, as now, is a steep drop-off in single-copy sales of the paper, which was once the mainstay of the tabloid. The most recent filing shows a 41% decline in single copy sales, to 10,701. For the first time in decades, the Herald now boasts fewer newsstand sales than it does home delivery subscribers (weekday home delivery subscribers now total 11,028).

The Herald has managed to ramp up the number of online subscribers by 80% over the past year, such that the average number of digital subscribers over the six-month period was 12,006. But given the newspaper’s late start to charging for online news — it put up a paywall on its website for the first time in April 2019 — it could be a while before that increase makes up for the decrease in print circulation.

The Herald’s numbers, along with the size of its newsroom, have declined quickly since it was sold in March 2018 by former owner Pat Purcell to MediaNews Group, a national chain owned by the New York hedge fund, Alden Global Capital.