In 2021, the Sunday issue of USA Today had a circulation of just under 534.6 thousand copies, down from over eight hundred thousand in the previous year. Daily circulation also fell significantly, from over one million in 2020 to 781 thousand in 2021.

This statistic illustrates the share of readers of USA Today in the past 2 weeks in the United States. As of September 2024, 30 percent of 18 - 29 year old consumers do so in the U.S. This is according to exclusive results from the Consumer Insights Global survey which shows that 30 percent of 30 - 49 year old customers also fall into this category.Statista Consumer Insights offer you all results of our exclusive Statista surveys, based on more than 2,000,000 interviews.

The statistic shows the number of newspaper readers in the United State in 2010 and 2014, by platform. The number of adults who read newspaper content online only increased from nine million in 2010 to 20.6 million in 2014.

Newspaper readers in the United States – additional information

Online newspapers started to gain popularity in the late 90s with the rise of the internet. In parallel to this development, print media has seen its market share deteriorate over the years. Figures show a sharp decline of the print media, especially for daily newspapers in the U.S. The number of daily newspapers in the U.S. shrank by nearly 400, going from 1,730 in 1981 to the 1,331 in 2014. Daily newspaper readership in the U.S. has also dropped considerably in the last few years.This decline is not limited to the consumer's age; in the U.S., daily newspaper consumption has decreased across all age groups.

In line with this trend, the number of newspaper readers in the U.S. who read print newspaper and only print newspaper has declined between 2010 and 2014. In 2010, nearly 95 million people read only print newspapers. This figure stood at about 74 million in 2014. On the other hand, the number of readers who read newspaper content online increased from around 38 million in 2010 to nearly 55 million in 2014. The share of readers who read newspaper content online only nearly doubled during the same time period.

Despite this shift in readership between online and printed newspapers, credible and well-established newspapers brand have been able to reinvent themselves in this market. The New York Times, for example, was the most popular website of a print publication in the U.S. as of July 2015, and has recently reached a milestone for its online products. The New York Times Company's digital-only subscriber number has passed the one million mark for the first time in 2015. Along with the New York Times, USA Today, Daily Mail, the Washington Post and the Guardian are leading newspapers in the U.S. in terms of unique website visitors.

The newspaper with the highest print circulation in the United States in the six months running to September 2023 was The Wall Street Journal, with an average weekday print circulation of 555.2 thousand. Ranking second was The New York Times, followed by The New York Post. The paper in the ranking with the highest year-over-year drop in circulation was The Denver Post with a decline of 25 percent (although Buffalo News recorded a higher drop, data does not refer to September 2022 to September 2023, see notes).

The global newspaper industry, valued at $83.28 billion in 2025, is experiencing a period of slow decline, reflected in its negative CAGR of -1.33%. This contraction is primarily driven by the ongoing shift towards digital media consumption and the resulting decline in print readership. The industry is grappling with the challenges of adapting to changing consumer preferences and monetizing digital content effectively. While subscription models offer a degree of stability, the advertising revenue stream, traditionally a major contributor, continues to be significantly impacted by the rise of online advertising platforms. The competitive landscape is characterized by a mix of large, established players like Gannett Co Inc and The New York Times, and smaller, regional publishers. Differentiation strategies often focus on niche content, investigative journalism, and building strong digital communities. Growth opportunities lie in strategic digital transformation, exploring innovative revenue models like paywalls and partnerships, and targeted advertising. The industry's success hinges on its ability to leverage data analytics to understand readership habits, refine content strategies, and increase engagement on digital platforms. Geographic variations exist, with mature markets in North America and Europe exhibiting slower growth than some developing regions, albeit with still substantial market sizes. Despite the challenges, the newspaper industry remains a significant source of information and news. The long-term forecast, however, suggests a continued contraction, albeit at a moderated pace. Key factors influencing the industry's future include the effectiveness of digital transformation strategies, the ability to attract and retain subscribers, and the broader macroeconomic climate. The industry's resilience will be determined by its capacity to adapt to the evolving media landscape and deliver value to readers in a rapidly changing digital environment. Successful players will focus on providing high-quality journalism, innovative digital experiences, and effective audience engagement strategies across multiple platforms. Recent developments include: January 2024: The Big Ten Conference, the United States’ oldest Division I college athletic conference, partnered with the USA TODAY Network to become the Big Ten’s official content partner for a new multi-year agreement between Gannett Co. Inc. and the Big Ten Conference., August 2023: PressReader, the all-you-can-read platform for newspapers and magazines, announced an expansion of its relationship with Gannett Company Inc. This leading subscription-based and digital-first media company offers expanded content.. Key drivers for this market are: Shift from Print to Digital Landscape Transforming the Market's Growth, Social and Political Climate Boosting the Market. Potential restraints include: Shift from Print to Digital Landscape Transforming the Market's Growth, Social and Political Climate Boosting the Market. Notable trends are: The Digital Newspaper and Advertising Markets are Expected to Grow Faster in the Newspaper Industry.

The circulation figures for daily newspapers in the United States reveal that USA Today distributed the most papers as of January 2019, with a daily circulation of over 1.62 million. Back in September 2017, The Wall Street Journal ranked first, with circulation figures far outperforming The New York Times, Chicago Tribune and New York Post. Although the 2019 data shows that all daily newspapers in the top ten ranking saw a decrease in circulation since 2017, the Chicago Tribune was hit the hardest. Despite making the top ten list in both years, the paper’s daily circulation decreased by almost 200 thousand.

The decline of newspaper circulation

It is no secret that print is floundering whilst at the same time digital media is flourishing. However, the impact of falling circulation figures on newspapers has an effect on advertising revenue, as circulation is one of the metrics used to determine and set advertising rates. In 2017, the estimated revenue of newspaper publishers in the United States was almost seven billion dollars lower than in 2010, despite several years of reasonably consistent revenue in terms of subscription and sales.

Similarly, print newspaper publishing revenue in the U.S. dropped by almost ten million dollars in seven years, whilst revenue for online newspapers showed positive growth.

The data was collected from five major American newspapers: USA Today, New York Post, New York Daily News, The New York Times, and Washington Post, known for their broad circulation and readership in the United States. Up to three articles concerning immigration will be analyzed from each newspaper, based on the categories defined by Bach and Harnish (1979): ‘Constatives’, ‘Directives’, ‘Commissives’, and ‘Acknowledgements,’ which serve as the foundation for examining the types of illocutionary acts in this research. The corpus attached will be used to analyze and understand elements of migration narratives that have emerged in the public discourse to shape a clear viewpoint.

The graph depicts the circulation figures of digital editions of U.S. newspapers from October 2012 to March 2013. The digital edition of the USA Today had an average circulation of 249,900 copies during that period.

United States - Currency in Circulation was 2385.15400 Bil. of $ in May of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, United States - Currency in Circulation reached a record high of 2385.15400 in May of 2025 and a record low of 3.71400 in August of 1917. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for United States - Currency in Circulation - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on June of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Currency in Circulation (CURRCIR) from Aug 1917 to Jun 2025 about currency and USA.

According to the most recently available data, there were 1,279 daily newspapers in the United States in 2018. The number of daily newspapers in the U.S. has been on the decline since 1970, when there were 1,748 daily news publications in the country. However, given the ongoing struggle of print media around the world, a decrease of around 460 newspapers over several decades is more positive than many might expect.

Daily newspapers in the U.S.

Whilst the actual number of daily newspapers has remained comparatively stable since the 1970s, the same cannot be said for circulation figures. In 2017, the paid circulation of daily newspapers in the United States amounted to 30.92 million, more than half the figure recorded for 1985. Even the major players in the industry are suffering – Chicago Tribune’s daily circulation fell from just over 438 thousand in September 2017 to 238 thousand in early 2019. Household names like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal also saw a sharp drop in circulation figures, leaving little hope for smaller publications.

News consumers and the reluctance to pay

Media markets across the world have become saturated with digital alternatives to print, and U.S. consumers can now access news content, gossip columns and reports on the latest sports games from a variety of sources, rendering daily newspapers in particular less valuable and sought after than ever before. The reasons to pick up a newspaper on your daily commute when the information you seek is available online are becoming hazy – why pay for print when you can get the digital version for free? In fact, a 2018 study revealed that the vast majority of surveyed U.S. adults had not paid for any local news content in the last year.

However, a small solace for print-only news outlets is that even digital news providers are not completely safe from consumers’ reluctance to pay. A report revealed that the wealth of free content available was the main reason why U.S. consumers were unwilling to pay for online news.

Sadly, the future situation for print outlets does not look bright, and for news providers in general there lies a constant uphill struggle to maintain integrity, prove accuracy and capture the attention of new and current consumers alike.

TikTok has 136 million monthly active users in the US alone.

A collection of word-frequency and other data representing 30,323 unique articles mentioning "humanities" or "liberal arts" (no duplicate or close-variant documents) published from 1977 to 2018 in the 15 top-circulation U.S. news sources and their associated blogs. The word "humanities" occurs 39,890 times in 28,398 documents in the collection, while the phrase "liberal arts" occurs 2,888 times in 2,380 documents. WE1S and other researchers use this data to look for broad patterns and to help guide closer study. The sources (ordered by number of articles in descending order) are: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, News Day, Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, Star Tribune Minneapolis, Houston Chronicle, Daily News, Seattle Times, Denver Post, USA Today, Tampa Bay Times, New York Post. (Full sources and counts are available as a csv file in the Collection Dataset.) Collection Metadata Created by: Lindsay Thomas Created on: June 22th 2019, 12:00:00 am WE1S Collection Registry ID: 20190622_2208_us-humanities-libarts-top-newspapers Data sources: LexisNexis (via LN Web Services Kit), ProQuest, and direct scraping from the Web. Suggested Citation for Collection WhatEvery1Says (WE1S) Project. (2019, June 06). Collection 5: U.S. Top Newspapers, 1977-2018 (articles mentioning "humanities" or "liberal arts"). doi: http://10.5281/zenodo.4914736.

In 2024, the average weekday print circulation of The New York Times was approximately ******* copies, less than half the figure recorded in 2014. In that year, the company ceased publishing its figures based on weekday circulation for print, online, and other digital platforms, and published only its print circulation. The New York Times The New York Times was founded in 1851 and has been a household name in the United States for decades. The newspaper has adapted well to changes in the media industry, and between the final quarters of 2014 and 2020, paid subscribers to The New York Times’ digital only news product increased from *** thousand to over ************. The New York Times is also one of the world’s leading podcast publishers, with unique streams and downloads of the company’s podcasts reaching tens and sometimes even hundreds of millions per month. Popularity and reliability As one of the most popular news websites in the United States, the NYT has been known to achieve ** million unique monthly visitors, outperforming the likes of NBC News, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. That said, like many news publications, The New York Times has been the subject of controversy over the years. From accusations of liberal bias to its hiring practices, the newspaper has faced challenges regarding not only its published content but also its employees. In spite of this, just ** percent of respondents to a survey seriously doubted the credibility of The New York Times, with most finding the publication to be a reliable source.

Teenagers make up the largest group of active users on TikTok.

The average adult TikTok user in America spends 33 minutes per day on the app.

The statistic shows data on print media circulation worldwide in 2014, by medium. According to McKinsey, consumer magazines circulation totaled 1.1 million units in 2014.

Print media circulation worldwide – additional information

With the growing popularity of the internet and the increasing use of digital platforms for news consumption, the decline of newspapers has been a constant topic in the print media industry. As of 2014, the circulation of daily newspapers totaled 540 million units worldwide. The U.S. is one of the most important markets for the print media industry, as the country is home of the top 3 newspapers in terms of circulation – USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times. The number of daily newspapers in the U.S. hit the lowest figure to date in 2014 – 1,331. In the early 80s, there were more than 1,700 daily newspapers in the country. Print subscriptions accounted for 93 percent of the revenue generated by newspaper circulation in the U.S., whereas digital subscriptions contributed to seven percent of the total circulation revenue. By 2017, digital subscriptions are forecast to account for 22 percent of newspaper circulation revenue in the country.

While newspapers have struggled with the transition between digital and print, consumer magazines have seen a more optimistic scenario in the last few years. Consumer magazines circulation worldwide added up to 1.1 billion units in 2014. The number of magazines in the U.S. has remained fairly consistent over the years, varying between around 7,100 and 7,400 between 2008 and 2014. Consumer magazines have seen a small decline in the circulation revenue in North America though, as revenue is projected to decrease from about nine billion U.S. dollars in 2011 to around 8.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2016. AARP, Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan, ESPN the Magazine and Family Circle are some of the leading magazines in terms of circulation in the U.S.

During the Cold War, printed media in the Soviet Union was under the control of the Communist Party, and newspapers were the primary method of communication with the public. In the U.S., however, almost all newspapers were privately owned, and freedom of the press meant that censorship was prohibited under the U.S. Constitution. The most popular newspaper in the USSR was Pravda, which continues to be among the most popular Russian publications today.

In terms of the circulation of daily newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s, the U.S. figures remained steady between an average of 62 and 63 million copies per day, whereas circulation in the USSR grew from 82 million in 1970 to 138 million in 1989. As the population difference remained roughly forty million in these years, the contrast in circulation cannot be explained by this; instead, the comparatively low figures in the U.S. were due to the consumption of media from other sources, as well as variations in societal trends.

Social media was by far the most popular news platform among 18 to 34-year-olds in the United States, with 47 percent of respondents to a survey held in August 2022 saying that they used social networks for news on a daily basis. By comparison, adults over 65 years old mostly used network news to keep up to date.

The decline of newspapers In the past, the reasons to regularly go out and purchase a print newspaper were many. Used not only for news but also apartment hunting, entertainment, and job searches (among other things), newspapers once served multiple purposes. This is no longer the case, with first television and then the internet taking care of consumer needs once covered by printed papers. Indeed, the paid circulation of daily weekday newspapers in the United States has fallen dramatically since the 1980s with no sign of future improvement.

News consumption habits

A survey on news consumption by gender found that 50 percent of women use either online-only news sites or social media for news each day, and 51 percent of male respondents said the same. Social media was by far the most used daily news platform among U.S. Millennials, and the same was true of Gen Z. One appeal of online news is that it often comes at no cost to the consumer. Paying for news found via digital outlets is not yet commonplace in the United States, with only 21 percent of U.S. consumers responding to a study held in early 2021 reporting having paid for online news content in the last year.

According to the most recently available data, Cosmopolitan had a total readership of over 32 million, 12.98 million of which accessed the magazine via its mobile website. Cosmopolitan, formerly called ‘The Cosmopolitan’ and often known as ‘Cosmo’ for short, is an entertainment, fashion, and lifestyle magazine for women. Even after several decades of operation, the magazine's subject matter remains in line with current trends when it comes to what people want to read. In 2018, women’s and fashion/beauty publications were in the top ten fastest growing magazine categories in the United States.

The history of Cosmopolitan

Cosmopolitan’s first issue (as a literary magazine, which was the publication’s original format) was published in 1886. By the 1930s, the magazine had a circulation of almost two million and impressive advertising income, and although was not always favorably reviewed, was popular for its short stories and serials. In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown became the publication’s chief editor and in the same year changed the format completely, releasing the first issue of Cosmopolitan as a women’s magazine.

Helen Gurley Brown wrote 1960s bestseller ‘Sex and the Single Girl’, which inspired Cosmopolitan’s new format. Brown and her work came under fire more than once by those who considered her work to be anti-feminist, and opinions on the publication remain divided today. Cosmopolitan has also been criticized for running stories or printing photographs similar to those in men's magazine Playboy, a publication which has often been branded ‘pornographic’. Brown was also keen to convey her advocacy for women’s sexual freedom and empowerment, but some critics consider Brown’s approach to be simultaneously progressive and retrogressive in that respect.

Cosmopolitan has had several different editors since Brown left the post in 1996, and remains consistent with Brown’s style and ideology, albeit with a more modern focus. The magazine has begun to incorporate more content focused on female body positivity and advice for inter-abled couples, as well as political and opinion pieces covering topics ranging from abortion law and environmental topics to animal abuse and the U.S. elections.