I recently downloaded the latest report on top media sources in North America and their circulations. Looking at the latest stats I couldn’t help but wonder what insights might pop out when compared over the past several years. Although I could only dig up info going back 3 years, some trends are so palpable that 3 years is all you need…

For instance, as recently as 2007 social media sites such as Facebook weren’t even on the radar at media monitoring agencies like Burrelles Luce. It wasn’t until last year (2008) someone hit them over the head for them to make an attempt to include social networking on their top-line year-end report. The fact that this enlightenment arrived in the midst of 2008, all while Facebook was alone commanding 130 million sets of eyeballs and 2.6 BILLION user minutes EACH DAY, is ridiculous.

To compound that, our focus on print media seems more and more like an antique concept. Reader’s Digest, the 3rd largest circulated consumer magazine has lost over 1.5M readers in the last three years. And while the rest of the top tier magazines appear to be at least maintaining, as a former circulation director myself I’m skeptical the numbers are really that positive. (a healthy CPM being more important than paid readership, funny things will happen to keep those numbers positive—how many offers for free or $1 media have you received in the last year?)

Anyway, here are just some of the insights that immediately struck me:

1) Newspaper circulations are irrevocably in decline. Every year these guys lose a little bit more. That doesn’t mean they have less readers, what it means is that those readers consumer the news in a different way… electronically.

2) Blogs are fickle but powerful. In a publishing realm that is entirely democratic (i.e. anyone can get a blog up and running), powerhouse blogs are vulnerable targets. You’ll notice some blogs have staying power for top ten status, but they all jockey year to year for position. Interestingly, so many good alternatives exist, competition for audiences has driven dedicated viewership down (i.e. in such a democratic realm, it's impossible to monopolize the audience).

3) Baby boomers & elderly still like reading paper. The AARP is flourishing!

4) Association magazines are the only print media showing demonstrable growth.

5) From a glance, it appears magazine circulation at least managing to avoid systemic decline. However, the numbers aren't indicative of the whole story... when you look only at magazine circulations with opt-in subscribers, the trajectory actually shows 6% decline since 2007... nearly the same as newspapers.