It’s an understatement to say a lot of things have changed in the newspaper business in the past 10 years. One change is that the major metropolitan newspapers have lost a larger percentage of their readers than smaller papers.

The state’s five largest papers had a combined weekday circulation of 2.6 million in 1999, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Ten years later, the big five have lost 778,167 and are down to a combined 1.8 million. That’s a drop of 30 percent.

                      Weekday circulation
                1999        2009           change
LA Times    1,098,347     723,181   -375,166   -34.2%
Chron         456,742     354,752   -101,990   -22.3%   
SD U-T        381,256     261,253   -120,003   -31.5%
SacBee        293,737     248,855    -44,882   -15.3%
OC Register   367,003     230,877   -136,126   -37.1%
   
Total       2,597,085   1,818,918   -778,167   -30.0%

Smaller papers also lost circulation during the 10 year period, but not nearly as much. One paper, the Contra Costa Times, remained almost even.

                     Weekday circulation
                  1999      2009          change
Coco Times       187,119   185,699    -1,420   -0.8%
SJ Merc          294,894   227,119   -67,775  -23.0%
Santa Rosa P-D    94,264    69,812   -24,452  -25.9%
Marin IJ          40,850    28,281   -12,569  -30.8%
San Mateo Times   35,357    27,345    -8,012  -22.7%
Monterey Hearld   35,077    27,306    -7,771  -22.2%
Santa Cruz Sen.   27,333    22,137    -5,196  -19.0%
Vallejo Times     20,612    15,817    -4,795  -23.3%
Napa V Register   19,352    14,497    -4,855  -25.1%

Total            754,858   618,013  -136,845  -18.1%

The nine smaller papers only lost 18 percent of their circulation compared to 30 percent for the big papers. Reasons may include the fact that the suburbs are growing faster than the larger cities. And smaller papers serve up local news, which readers crave, while the big papers can’t provide much local coverage because of their size.

Notes:

1. In 1999, the Chronicle was part of a joint operating agreement with the Examiner. For purposes of this study, only the Chronicle’s Monday-Friday circulation was compared to the Chron’s current weekday figure of 354,752.

2. The Oakland Tribune wasn’t apart of this comparison because its circulation today includes newspapers such as the Hayward Review and Fremont Argus that had separate circulation reports in 1999. It was hard to get a clean apples-to-apples comparison for the Trib, so it was left out.