[LINK] Newspapers online

[Ivan Trundle]

I'm not at all keen to sustain the tone of the current thread, so here are some interesting figures on newspaper circulation instead:

Rank	Title	Country	Circulation (000)

1	Yomiuri Shimbun	Japan	14,067
2	The Asahi Shimbun	Japan	12,121
3	Mainichi Shimbun	Japan	5,587
4	Nihon Keizai Shimbun	Japan	4,635
5	Chunichi Shimbun	Japan	4,512
6	Bild	Germany	3,867
7	Sankei Shimbun	Japan	2,757
8	Canako Xiaoxi (Beijing)	China	2,627
9	People’s Daily	China	2,509
10	Tokyo Sports	Japan	2,425
11	The Sun	United Kingdom	2,419
12	The Chosun Ilbo	South Korea	2,378
13	USA Today	USA	2,310
14	The Wall Street Journal	USA	2,107
15	Daily Mail	UK	2,093
16	The Joongang Ilbo	South Korea	2,084
17	The Dong-A Ilbo	South Korea	2,052
18	Nikkan Sports	Japan	1,965
19	Hokkaido Shimbun	Japan	1,922
20	Dainik Jagran	India	1,911

(http://www.wan-press.org/article2825.html)

Granted, this is almost 5-yr-old data, and some papers don't submit their figures for independent audit, but it supports the premise that China tops the list in terms of circulation in total, (93.5 million per day), followed by India with 78.8 million, Japan with 70.4 million, and US with 48.3 million. Russia is notably absent, though it is rumoured that if they were audited, then they'd outstrip most others.

Okay, so that's in print. It's harder to find this information on a world scale, since companies such as Alexa and Compete don't truly represent world data traffic. However, sites such as bbc.co.uk rank very highly in these metrics, and much higher than you'd think.

iT