I’ve been particularly remiss in updating information about the newspapers in Northern Ireland. I keep a track of the Google (and others) searches directing people to this poor blog. Of late, I noticed that a good few searches were coming in looking for information on Northern Ireland newspaper circulations. I’d hate to fell that you didn’t get what you were looking for:
| Title | Jan – June 2008 | Jul – Dec 2008 | Jan – June 2009 |
| Newsletter | 26,199 | 25,253 | 25,250 |
| Irish News | 47,911 | 47,819 | 46,800 |
| Belfast Telegraph | 75,964 | 69,457 | 68,024 |
| Belfast News | 46,966 | 47,446 | 46,865 |
| Irish Independent | 1,994 | 1,914 | 2,070 |
| Irish Times | 3,929 | 3,828 | 4,001 |
| Total | 202,963 | 195,717 | 146,210 |
| Sunday World | 65,436 | 64,901 | 63,637 |
| Sunday Life | 66,763 | 63,528 | 63,528 |
| Sunday Independent | 6,794 | 6,264 | 6,557 |
| Sunday Business Post | 1,297 | 1,438 | 1,638 |
| Sunday Tribune | 3,328 | 3,222 | 3,162 |
| Total | 143,618 | 139,353 | 138,522 |
I suppose the only real highlights are that, over the year, the BelTel lost nearly 8,000 copies and the Sunday Life lost 3,200. Volumes are low as is the population in the franchise. Another possible reason for small Daily volumes is a thriving ‘non-daily’ market with nearly half a million weekly papers being sold every seven days in the North. The tabloids were no included (ie The Sun, The Mirror and their Sunday sisters). They don’t break out the sales in the north and instead use ‘publisher’s statements’. I’ve seen a few publishers’ statements and the same publishers print runs and for those reasons I converted to cynicism.
