Newsstand sales plummet

Some of the numbers are breathtaking. A few examples covering the last six months of 2009, as reported by the the Audit Bureau of Circulations:

--W, down 41.7 percent to about 25,000
--Newsweek, down 41.3 percent to about 62,000
--SmartMoney, down 37 percent to about 26,000
--Time, down 34.9 percent to about 90,000
--Good Housekeeping, down 30.7 percent to 395,000
--Redbook, down 30.1 percent to 126,000.

From the NYT:

Newsstand sales tend to be driven by the economy and are a more timely indicator of a magazine's vitality than subscriptions, which tend to lag and which can be driven by heavy discounting. While newsstand sales are a small percentage of most magazines' circulation, they are a profitable part of it -- publishers typically charge only a fraction of the newsstand price for a subscription copy.

Along those lines, overall circulation, including subscriptions, didn't fare as badly as newsstand sales.