The Guardian and i were the only two UK national titles which managed to increase print sales year on year in February.
The Independent’s cut-price stablemate rose 0.64 per cent year on year to an average of 300,110 sales a day. A price increase from 20p to 30p at the end of February did not appear to affect the figures.
The Guardian achieved a 1.5 per cent lift year on year to 196,425 despite selling for £1.60 last month versus £1.40 in the same period a year earlier.
The biggest print faller was the Financial Times, down 16.6 per cent to 224,372 a day. The FT now sells around 70,000 copies a day in the UK. The FT revealed last month that it now has 415,000 digital subscribers.
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The Independent suffered another sharp dip year on year by 14.4 per cent and now sell less than 50,000 copies a day (when 16,802 bulks are taken out of the equation.
The sacking of Daily Telegraph editor Tony Gallagher at the end of January did not appear to do its sales any harm – its sales performance was well ahead of The Times, falling 2 per cent year on year.
A Guardian spokeman said of that title’s strong performance: “We continue to invest in quality journalism and our print offerings. We recently launched the new Saturday supplement 'Do Something', which is proving very popular, and we have supported this with our highly successful marketing campaign 'Own the Weekend.' We have really set the news agenda over the past year with our award-winning handling of the Snowden revelations, and continue to break new ground with our reporting."
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