Readers to NY Post: Drop Dead

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Circulation at the tabloid New York Post has plummeted nearly 30 percent over the past two-and-a-half years to 508,000, lagging behind the 544,000 copies sold by its tabloid competitor New York Daily News.

Media pundits ascribe some of the loss in  Post readers to gossip Web sites such as TMZ and Gawker, which have put a dent in the Post's Page Six gossip factory. The Post, which was founded in 1801 and has published longer than any other U.S. daily, is part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. empire. Murdoch bought the Post in 1976, unloaded it in 1988, and repurchased it in 1993.

If Post founder and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton had known the fate that awaited his newspaper, he might have spared Aaron Burr the trouble and shot himself.

Playboy Sheds Circulation: Top Half of 2009 a Bust for Periodicals

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TV Guide lost 10 percent of its readers, and Playboy was close behind, shedding 9.2 percent of its circulation in the first six months of 2009, compared to first-half figures a year ago, leading the bruised magazine industry, which overall experienced a 1.2 percent decline in circulation, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).

ABC reported that for the first half of 2009, grocery store and newsstand sales of magazines plunged from 41.4 million copies in 2008 to 36.3 million copies in 2009, a 12 percent decrease. Combined circulation for 521 consumer magazines went from 343.7 million copies sold in the first half of 2008 to 339.6 million for the comparable period in 2009, according to the ABC.  Meanwhile, ad sales declined by 21 percent at major domestic periodicals in the first half of 2009.

If this keeps up,  newsstand hawkers, the principal suppliers of information to fictional private eyes since Hollywood started making talkies, will become extinct.