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A source outside the Los Angeles Newspaper Group who has been reliable before says the Daily News suffered a scarier circulation plunge than even the drop at the Times: down 10.7% daily and 12.7% Sunday in this week's numbers for the past six-month period. (The Times, it came out yesterday, was off 8% daily, 6% Sunday.) The LA Observed source also says LANG's Long Beach Press-Telegram was down 14.3% in Sunday circulation and 8.5% daily, and that the group's other papers are shedding readers too. If true those are some big, painful numbers and give immediacy to the layoffs and restructuring that LANG carried out yesterday. The Daily News lost its publisher, four newsroom positions and the heads of circulation, human resources and finance. (Twenty-one jobs in all at the DN, the paper's story says.) John McKeon, the group CEO who has a past at the L.A. Times, will wear the publisher's hat at the Daily News. The Daily News' union blog also comments. The Times story says that LANG's parent, Dean Singleton's Media News, is "believed to be close" to buying the Daily Breeze.
* See the raw numbers: Mark Lacter found the circulation figures at the L.A. Business Journal. LANG's papers took a big hit.
Yesterday: Shoe falls at the Daily News