South Dacola catches the circulation numbers for that Sioux Falls paper in their pitch to the City of Sioux Falls to remain city government’s official newspaper. What will the city get for its money? Distribution of its minutes and notices to 19,568 daily readers and 31,468 Sunday readers. By those numbers, that’s one Wednesday paper for every 9.1 local residents.
The South Dakota Newspaper Association provides significantly different estimates of that Sioux Falls paper’s circulation, plus figures for every other member paper in the state. Based on those numbers and July 1, 2016, Census population estimates, that Sioux Falls paper has the lowest ratio of daily circulation to home city population of all South Dakota dailies. The winner in this category is the venerable Madison Daily Leader, which apparently prints enough papers for darn near everyone in town who can read:
| Paper | daily circulation | city pop | daily circ/city pop |
| Madison Daily Leader | 6,700 | 7,425 | 90.24% |
| Mitchell Daily Republic | 9,417 | 15,729 | 59.87% |
| Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan | 7,315 | 14,566 | 50.22% |
| Huron Plainsman | 6,347 | 13,117 | 48.39% |
| Watertown Public Opinion | 9,046 | 22,172 | 40.80% |
| Aberdeen American News | 10,730 | 28,415 | 37.76% |
| Spearfish Black Hills Pioneer | 4,029 | 11,531 | 34.94% |
| Rapid City Journal | 18,946 | 74,048 | 25.59% |
| Brookings Register | 4,609 | 23,895 | 19.29% |
| Pierre Capital Journal | 2,572 | 14,008 | 18.36% |
| that Sioux Falls paper | 26,137 | 174,360 | 14.99% |
As you can easily imagine, these calculations miss two key parts of determining actual market penetration. Each paper serves surrounding communities—the Black Hills Pioneer, for instance, serves four competing population centers in the Northern Black Hills, a demographic situation unique among all eleven dailies—meaning the actual circulation per market population ratios are even lower. In the other direction, one paper may be read by multiple individuals. One Aberdeen American News gets read by three people in my house (the little one regularly reads the comics, weather, obits, and crime reports—make what you will of that psychological profile). These two factors thus cancel each other out to some degree. Plus, they would affect most if not all dailies equally, suggesting we could take these circulation/local population ratios as reasonable guesses as to relative reach.
If I sum of those circulation figures and divide by the summed populations, I get a circulation/population ratio of 26.51%. Without Sioux Falls, the average for the other ten papers is 35.44%. Sioux Falls is thus really dragging down the statewide newspaper circulation/population ratio. If Sioux Falls printed papers at that otherwise statewide average, between the daily circulations of the Spearfish and Aberdeen papers, they’d be moving nearly 62,000 newspapers a day.
Tough times in the newspaper biz, and the Argus Leader’s numbers are low, but are you sure it’s appropriate to equate subscribers with readers?
With fewer people reading newspapers, more and more read them online, maybe that metric would be more relevant – at least for advertisers.
I would GUESS the smaller town’s subscription base tends to have a lot of former residents subscribing. Older folks far more likely to read an actual physical paper, too, right?
Sioux Falls paper has gotten TERRIBLE! Do they not care enough to know that almost the same stories are run in the A Section and USA Today. At least one a day. Obviously they don’t care anymore.
Sioux Falls paper has gotten TERRIBLE! They not care enough to notice that almost the same stories are run in the A Section and USA Today. At least one repeat a day. Obviously no review process.
grudznick has long been predicting the total demise of that Sioux Falls paper. People will laugh and laugh, and Mr. H’s readership will go up, just a notch.g
That Sioux Falls paper stopped delivering daily papers to my hometown (Huron) quite a while ago. Recently, they have continued Sunday issues in a few stores. I don’t buy them or read them because they are mostly USA today copies. Shouldn’t the fastest growing city in South Dakota have a viable newspaper? I read Aberdeen and Rapid City newspapers when I go to the library. Occasionally I check out that Sioux Falls paper. No change.
Wayne, I would agree that the largest city in the state should be able to support the best newspaper in the state. But I wonder: to what extent does direct competition with TV cut into that Sioux Falls paper’s business? Arguably KELO, KSFY, and KDLT don’t cut into the news markets in Madison, Mitchell, Yankton, and Huron as much because those TV stations aren’t going to cover the small-town council meetings and other events unless something really big happens.
I wonder if one can find out how many registered users and page views there are in each of the SD daily newspapers?
I used to get the Public Opinion (Watertown) but the content is so skewed to the right and the articles so biased that I cancelled it. This paper doesn’t try to educate, it tries to placate. I know, when I talk to people from Watertown I can’t use knowledge of current events in the conversation because what’s happened this week in the country has been hidden from them. And then, the males watch the short skirted blondes on FoxNews and think they’re keeping up with the news. I get free twice daily updates from NYTimes and WashPost. and breaking news push notifications on the phone. The only place for news in SoDak is The FreePress.