According to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC) figures, newspaper circulation figures for the second half of 2008 fell for most of the country’s daily and Sunday newspapers compared with the same period in 2007.

More detailed information covering all ABC audited titles on the island of Ireland including magazines, is available from Eason Advertising. However, here are the uncomfortable headlines about newspaper circulations in summary. Note that this does not include UK newspapers with Irish editions circulating in Ireland eg The Sunday Times. These figures out in due course. Also these figures concern circulations only, not readerships.

Just one “winner” on the same period a year earlier:

• Sunday Business Post – up just over 2% to 54,993.

Little or no change on the same period a year earlier:

• The Sunday World was little changed at 285,214

The losers on the same period a year earlier:

• Irish Independent (largest circulating daily) – 54,610, down 4%
• The Irish Times – 115,462 – down 3%
• The Irish Examiner – 52,544 – down 6%
• The Evening Herald 74,927 down almost 9%
• Evening Echo 24,522 down 5.3%
• The Sunday Independent – 270,362, down 4.3%
• The Sunday Tribune – 66,672- down 4.8%

The ABC report also provided figures for a number of websites. See table below.

We’ve ranked them by what we consider to be one of the best criteria: unique users. Note some of the periods are not recent. Note also that this list is restricted to sites who chose to subscribe to the rigorous  ABC method of independent audit.