An exception to the 20-year slide in circulation has been national papers. USA Today has gone from a dead start to a circulation of 2.1 million daily. There is no exact measure of its impact on other dailies, but it clearly supplants local papers for conventiongoers and other travelers and represents competition to the other two nationally circulated dailies, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Only 14 percent of USA Today's circulation comes from home delivery. The Wall Street Journal holds its own, going back over the 2 million mark (with the addition in the most recent ABC audit of 300,000 paid subscribers to its online edition).¹⁶ [1] Three-quarters of its circulation is attributed to home delivery and subscription sales spread across the country. Less obviously, The New York Times has gradually shifted from a metropolitan New York paper with some national circulation to having nearly half its circulation outside the New York City area.¹⁷ [2]

In addition to a variety of free Internet news sites and the rise of CNN and NPR, the competitive climate for providing a basic national and international news report has grown far tougher for the typical metropolitan or small-city newspaper. Together, the top 7 percent of the nation's newspapers (105 out of 1,457) command 55 percent of the total circulation.¹⁸ [3]

Percent of Newspapers and Total Circulation by Circulation Category, 2002

Design Your Own Chart [4]

Source: Editor and Publisher Yearbook 2003

* Due to rounding, percents do not add up to 100.

Number of U.S. Daily Newspapers with Circulation Over 50,000

1950 to 2000, measured in 5-year increments

Design Your Own Chart [5]

Source: Editor and Publisher Yearbook data