Register numbers plummet, and a truly dumb idea
The numbers just get worse and worse for The Des Moines Register. The Sunday circulation of the newspaper was once around 550,000 copies. In the six months ended last Sept. 27, the Sunday circulation — including electronic editions and 3,400 or so papers sold to employees at a discount — was 204,926. That’s down 15,000 from a year before and 25,000 from two years before.
The figures for the daily Register are even worse. Once the circulation was around 250,000, but average Monday-Friday circulation was 116,876 in the latest period, down a whopping 13.5 percent from 135,057 a year before and 141,093 two years ago. And those figures are as hefty as you can make them — including 1,588 copies distributed in colleges, 2,893 sold to employees at a deep discount and 1,977 “electronic edition” copies.
It gets worse. The newspaper considers Polk, Warren, Dallas and Story counties as its home market, with a few townships thrown in from Boone and Clark counties. The Sunday circulation in that market now is down to 111,463; it was 117,619 a year ago and 121,474 two years ago. Meantime, the number of households in that market is increasing, meaning the newspaper’s “penetration” — the all-important figure for advertisers — is falling even faster than circulation. In the latest six months, that penetration for the Sunday Register was just 45.5 percent, meaning fewer than one out of two households in the primary market now get The Sunday Register either by home delivery or through newsstands. For the daily Register — where just 78,823 copies are sold in the prime market — the penetration has fallen to 32.2 percent. That means fewer than one out of three households is getting the newspaper during the week.
One might think the Register’s daily circulation in the suburbs would be the savior for the paper. Not so. Skinny recently got her hands on the Register’s preprint quantity spreadsheet, an item used to determine the number of flyers that advertisers like Target and Menards should supply for inserts. Assuming what the Register tells advertisers is accurate, Urbandale “leads” the ’burbs with only 38.3 percent of the mailing addresses subscribing to the daily paper. West Des Moines is next with just 31.63 percent, and Waukee follows with a mere 28.95 percent. But what’s strange is that Mason City/Clear Lake has 3,975 subscribers to the daily Register, making Skinny wonder what this says about those papers.
Kind-of-interesting side note: The paper also reports sales to employees, a number that has held at precisely 2,893 a day for at least the past four years. The Sunday figure has held at exactly 3,393 that same time. Is that an uncanny coincidence — or phony numbers? Just asking.
Meantime, the newspaper apparently will go another year without winning a Pulitzer Prize, though it’s hard to believe there were any more dramatic photos last year than the Register’s pictures of the woman being rescued by the construction worker in the Des Moines River. The Register last won a Pulitzer in 1991. The prizes will be announced next month, but the juries have submitted their lists of three finalists, and industry gossip doesn’t put the Register on any of the lists. Nor does it list Cityview’s Brian Duffy, though his cartoon on the Iowa Supreme Court’s gay-marriage ruling surely was one of the nation’s best last year. ...
Now, politics:
Legislators sometimes say and do dumb things, but has there ever been anything dumber said or done than the proposal offered up last week from Matt Windschitl, the Republican House member from Missouri Valley? A gunsmith whose family owns the Double Barrel Shooters Supply, he took the floor during debate on a bill that would bar gun ownership by people convicted of domestic violence. “Instead, Windschitl proposes a state tax credit for domestic abuse victims who buy a new gun,” reported Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson. “And he also wants to create a new state fund that would provide self-defense training to domestic abuse victims, including the technique of shooting ‘to wound’ rather than shooting to kill.”
“You really couldn’t make up stuff like this,” said a guy who took time off from slapping his forehead to e-mail Skinny.
(Sanity did prevail. The original bill, not Windschitl’s proposal, passed pretty easily.) ...
Eh? Democrat Selden Spencer has filed papers to run for the Iowa house seat in district 10, which is rural Story County and parts of Hamilton and Hardin counties. The seat now is held by Republican Dave Deyoe. Spencer, a neurologist, lost a Congressional race to Tom Latham in 2006 and was ready to take him on again in 2008 when he suddenly dropped out. Word was the Democrats had discovered something pretty damaging in his past — more than a youthful folly — that would have blown up his campaign, and they invited him to drop out. The party leaders apparently have different standards for state races, if there really is a youthful more-than-folly.
Terry Branstad doesn’t have the Republican gubernatorial nomination yet, but folks already are speculating about who his running-mate might be. One well-known Republican told Skinny the other morning he thinks it will be former Ankeny legislator Carmine Boal — female, conservative, experienced and, most recently, policy director for the Branstad campaign. A few minutes later, a well-connected Democrat said he’d put his money on Cedar Rapids’ Christian Fong, the bright, young telegenic (and very, very conservative) businessman who made a brief stab at seeking the gubernatorial nomination this go-round. (A recent Tweet from Fong: “My wife, Jenelle, makes world’s greatest homemade choc chip cookies. Which doesn’t necessarily excuse me eating 6 of them yesterday.”) Best guess: If Branstad gets the nomination, he’ll pick a somewhat moderate pro, probably from eastern Iowa, since he’ll already have the party’s right wing — they have no place to go — and he’ll need to woo independents. If Fong were a moderate, he’d fit the bill.
Question: Where was Chet Culver last week while bigwigs — Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and others — were lunching in Ankeny during that big ag conference? Answer: Working the phones in his campaign office, trying to raise money. So says one guy who reports getting a fund-raising voice mail while the larger-than-expected crowd in Ankeny was vying for fewer-than-expected lunch boxes. But Culver was at the 4-A boys basketball game Saturday night, where he was introduced. “More boos than cheers,” e-mailed a fan. …
And, finally, how soon they forget: A question in the Ask Us column of the Mason City Globe Gazette recently asked: Is Michael Gartner still alive?
Skinny will ask around. CV
