YORKSHIRE’S regional daily newspapers saw their sales plummet by nearly 20,000 copies a day in the first half of the year, as the industry battles to stem hemorrhaging sales.
Sales were down on average 11.5% across the region’s eight titles, according to official ABC figures, which was worse than the national average of a 10.2% decline.
Hardest hit was the Yorkshire Evening Post, as nearly one-in-six readers stopped buying the newspaper during the period. which sold 3,856 fewer copies.
Sales at the region’s two biggest-selling dailies, the Hull Daily Mail and the Yorkshire Post, were decimated as they lost 3,511 and 3,135 daily sales respectively.
The only daily newspaper in the region to avoid a double-digit drop was the Huddersfield Daily Examiner, which saw its sales fall 8.1% to 14,051.
Figures also released by ABC, the industry-owned body which monitors media performance, showed the migration to online continues apace, with a few exceptions.
The Yorkshire Post was one of just four websites that saw a fall in daily unique browsers – which measures the number of different devices used each day – as its audience dropped by 10.6% to 25,615.
The Hull Daily Mail, which also has the region’s largest online audience, increased by 37.9% to 85,727, while the Yorkshire Evening Post rose by 13.6% to 69,901.
