'Where is the bottom?'

In 1981 the Miami Herald's daily circulation was somewhere around 421,000. Sunday circulation was near a half-million copies.

By 2008, the paper's daily circulation had slipped to about 240,000, and Sunday was 311,000.

In 2010 - according a page on the McClatchy Company's website that hasn't been updated in years - the Herald's daily circulation had fallen to 191,873 daily, and 263,612 Sunday....or less according to other numbers. 

In Oct. 2010, Herald veteran Aminda Marques Gonzalez was named the paper's executive editor, succeeding Anders Gyllenhaal.

"I am thrilled to have Mindy take the helm of the newsroom at the Miami Herald, then publisher David Landsberg said. "She is an outstanding journalist with a deep personal connection to South Florida. She is uniquely qualified to lead us into the future." [Source]

However, according to a recently filed publisher's statement, [embedded below] the Herald's daily print circulation is now at about 86,000 copies, and Sunday is 157,000. (Last year's publisher's statement listed the daily circulation at a little more than 94,000 copies daily, and almost 174,000 Sunday.)

Put another way, in the four years since Marques Gonzalez took "the helm" at the paper, the Herald's daily circulation has dropped by more than 105,000 copies, and Sunday's loss is almost the same - about 106,000.

"Where is the bottom?" one former high-ranking Herald staffer asked in an email that's now making the rounds.

Miami Herald, Oct. 9, 2014, page 4A.
Click here to enlarge.

Earlier this year Marques Gonzalez told Ocean Drive Magazine: "A big percentage of our revenue now is digital; I think we’re at 20 percent."

So how is the Herald's website doing?

Quantcast counts 14M impressions per month and 4.7M unique visitors. That doesn't include their blogs.

And for all you data freaks, there's a wealth of information on Quantcast's website.

For instance, 39% of visits to MiamiHerald.com come from people who are just passing through, but who account for almost 75% of the site's visitors on any given day.

So while the website numbers are nothing to sneeze at, Marques Gonzalez and company still have a way to go before the paper's digital revenues catch up with, or surpass print.

Is Marques Gonzalez up to the task? For an answer to that, look at her track record so far.

Or as one Herald insider told me in an email last April:

The executive editor actually boasted recently about 20 percent of the Herald's revenue coming from digital means. Think about that - after all of this time and effort, only 20 percent of our revenue is coming from the newspaper's only hope for the future, digital. And that's 20 percent of an overall revenue base that steadily diminishes as print circulation and advertising evaporate. That's hardly boast-worthy.

Anybody wanna buy some ads?