In my posting yesterday about the shock departure of the Irish Independent editor Claire Grady I mentioned the paper's lack-lustre circulation performance.
But I need to put that in context, so - in a further interruption to my holiday - here are the latest ABC-audited Irish newsprint newspaper sales.
Ireland's national titles have been declining for several years past, so there isn't much of surprise in their continuing falls over the first six months of this year. The overall year-on-year fall remains worrying: 7.3% for the dailies and 6.3% for the Sundays.
And the two leading daily titles, the Irish Independent (the Indo) and the Irish Times, remain too reliant on bulk (aka multiple) sales - the copies sold at a fraction of their cover price to enable hotels and airports to give them away free. It means that only 87% of the Independent's total and 88% of the Times's were actively purchased.
In the January-June period this year, sales of the Indo fell 7.2% to 112,383 (including 14,083 bulks) compared with the same period in 2013 while the Times's fell 4.6% to 80,332 (including 9,140 bulks).
The Cork-based Irish Examiner was down by 7.6% to an average sale of 35,026 copies, including a mere 329 bulks.
There was worse news for the city dailies, the Dublin Herald and Cork Evening Echo. The Herald suffered an 11.9% drop to 51,600 (including 2,183 bulks) while the Echo's total was down 10.5% to 13,787.
The main Sunday titles fared as badly. The Sunday Independent lost 5.1% of its sale to register an average of 220,565 an issue. Its 11,463 bulks accounted for more than 5% of its headline sale.
The Sunday Business Post had a dramatic fall, down 11.2% to just 34,012 copies (including 994 bulks). The feisty red-top Sunday World, which eschews bulk sales, sold an average of 198,260, representing a 6.1% year-on-year fall.
North of the border, the Belfast Telegraph continued its long decline, shedding yet more paid-for sales. Only 77% of its daily "sale" of 48,014 was sold at the full cover price of 70p, because 8,510 were free pick-up copies in dump bins while a further 2,499 were bulk sales.
In real terms, it therefore sold 37,005 a day, many fewer than its rival, the Irish News, which had a headline sale of 39,935, with just 204 bulks.
The Ulster News Letter, at 19,314, fell by a further 6.9%. Its price increase, up from 90p to £1, will surely have had an effect.
Will a digital-first merger transform INM's titles?
Two weeks ago Independent News & Media (INM) announced that it is to merge the editorial operations of the Dublin Herald and the Sunday World.
The editorial staffs are to be integrated in a "content centre" in order to provide a seven-day service to the two papers, which will retain their separate titles.
In what INM's editor-in-chief Stephen Rae described it as "a fundamental restructuring of the production and reporting process", the new operation will become "digital first".
The change will involve the loss of nine jobs at the Herald and four at the Sunday World. Volunteers for redundancy will be sought.
According to the Sunday Times's John Burns, the merger makes sense because there is "a similarity in tone and theme between the newspapers", both of which "specialise in coverage of showbiz and crime."
Sources: ABC/Sunday Times/Irish Times: (1) and (2)
