The Manchester Evening News will today become the first regional newspaper to regularly publish its website traffic figures along with its print circulation figures.
When regional newspaper’s semi-annual ABC circulation report is published at noon today, MEN Media will release a “group product report”, and ABC document which includes both its print and online figures. It will be publishing this cross-media report every six months, a spokesman for the circulation auditing body said.
The MEN’s website, ManchesterEveningNews.co.uk, is believed to be the regional newspaper website with the largest online readership. In a previous ABCe report, published last November (PDF), the site reported 1,534,981 monthly unique users generating 9,150,815 page impressions.
The Guardian Media Group-owned MEN adopted a part-free distribution strategy in 2006, causing its headline paid circulation figure to plummet in recent ABC audits. However, the paper’s editor, Paul Horrocks, says its total cross-media readership is actually on the up, particularly among a younger, wealthier readership in the city centre.
In January, the MEN, along with other papers that have adopted a part-free strategy, won their efforts to have their free and paid circulation figures combined beginning in the August ABC audits.
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