In response to a post last week which cited a New York Post piece noting recent declines in newspaper circulation, reader Ari sends this possible explanation from the Freakonomics blog:

For the past several years, newspapers have been reporting on their own circulation declines with a strange degree of intensity. They write prominent, mournful, self-flagellating stories of their own decline that remind me of a friend who used to sniff his own underarm when he knew it was particularly randy. Every six months, when the circulation figures are reported, a new round of articles appears.

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Not everyone is convinced that newspapers are dying, of course. Jack Welch wants to buy the Boston Globe; Dow Jones just managed to find a buyer who paid $282 million for six smaller newspapers; and of course several months ago, McClatchy bought Knight-Ridder. Circulation declines notwithstanding, these transactions suggest an underlying value that the newspapers’ own articles do not reflect.

The media executive Allan D. Mutter makes a very interesting point on his blog about circulation declines: a lot of them are essentially intentional. That is, circulation figures are falling in part because many newspapers�in response, I am guessing, to recent audit scandals at Newsday and elsewhere�have stopped distributing free or cheap copies of their papers, which used to be helpful in padding circulation figures.

This may be true, although I don’t see how this can be spun into a sign of health for newspapers. I also find it hard to believe that newspapers aren’t losing any readers due to competition from online (and other) outlets.

But let’s be generous and assume that 75% of circulation declines are a result of gradually eliminating deceptive circulation-pumping practices. What this means is that newspaper circulation is still declining several percentage points a year (depending on the particular paper) and that newspapers are obliquely owning up to the fact that they’ve been releasing artificially inflated circulation numbers for years.

This theory suggests that long-term declines in newspaper circulation won’t be as severe as current numbers indicate, but in order for this theory to be true, newspapers have to admit to yet another ploy that undercuts their credibility. Not exactly a face-saving trade-off.