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The Daily Mail is closing on rival the Sun’s position as the UK’s best-selling national newspaper, according to the latest monthly circulation figures.
The Mail closed the gap between the two papers by 30,355 copies in the last month, bringing it to an average circulation of 1.17m in September, ABC figures show.
The Sun sold an average of 1.24m copies but saw a 12 per cent year-on-year drop in September. It now has a lead of just 74,459 over the Daily Mail, but when the Sun’s bulk sales are removed that drops to 7,600.
The free Metro has the largest distribution of any UK newspaper at 1.42m. It climbed ahead of the Sun’s total circulation for the first time in March 2018.
The Observer saw the smallest circulation decline among paid-for national newspapers in September, falling by two per cent year-on-year to 159,780.
The biggest year-on-year declines were recorded by the Daily Star on Sunday (down 20 per cent to 176,949), and the Sunday People (down 18 per cent to 145,547), both owned by Reach.
National newspaper circulations for September 2019 (ABC):
| Publication | Total average circ. Sept 2019 | Year-on-year % change | Bulks |
| Metro FREE | 1,415,071 | -3% | |
| The Sun | 1,240,959 | -12% | 66,859 |
| Daily Mail | 1,166,500 | -7% | |
| The Sun on Sunday | 1,052,465 | -13% | 66,861 |
| The Mail on Sunday | 969,894 | -8% | |
| London Evening Standard FREE | 820,180 | -4% | |
| The Sunday Times | 659,699 | -8% | 51,508 |
| Daily Mirror | 474,055 | -13% | |
| Sunday Mirror | 386,004 | -15% | |
| The Times | 372,812 | -12% | 54,133 |
| The Daily Telegraph | 310,586 | -14% | |
| Daily Express | 303,243 | -9% | |
| Daily Star | 296,473 | -17% | 645 |
| Sunday Express | 262,070 | -9% | |
| The Sunday Telegraph | 244,351 | -14% | |
| i | 225,496 | -7% | 49,226 |
| Daily Star – Sunday | 176,949 | -20% | |
| Financial Times | 169,127 | -7% | 30,230 |
| The Observer | 159,780 | -2% | |
| Sunday People | 145,547 | -18% | |
| The Guardian | 130,496 | -4% | |
| Daily Record | 109,908 | -12% | |
| Sunday Mail | 108,742 | -14% | |
| Sunday Post | 94,559 | -15% | 1,738 |
| City AM FREE | 82,331 | -3% |
Picture: Reuters/Peter Nicholls
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Journalist-at-large, Local Trust
Investigation Officer (Forests), Global Witness
Editor in Chief, Scottish Sun
Amen JC. How bad for the environment are newspapers aswell? Cost of recycling and or landfills for those that forget to recycle them. Not to mention the carbon footprint for running printing presses and the vans driving these newspapers everyday to newsagents, stores and supermarkets. Hope the rest take a leaf out of Aldi’s book and simply stop selling these propaganda rags polluting the environment.
Aldi propbably stopped taking newspapers due to operational inefficiencies, nothing to do with circulation numbers. It was costing them to deal with returns on a daily basis…it doesnt for with their UK model, and probably has nothing to do with politics or morals. For landfill, see packaging and food waste.