There were two trends I noticed while compiling yesterday's chart of the last two decades of newspaper circulation trends. I relied upon the New York Times for data, and one trend I found there was that, in general, over the last 16 years, reporting the actual number of newspapers circulated grew and then radically diminished. Instead, most often, the data given was year-over-year percentage changes, or other far less specific metrics. In today's paper, Richard Perez-Pena nicely reports both percentages and actual numbers for 7 papers. But back in this story from April, actual numbers are only given for one paper—the Times itself. The other trend—well, it is largely a flat-line trend!—was the New York Times headlines themselves. Very rarely did media reporters attach themselves to a narrative such as the now-moot Denver newspaper battle, or the nearly-moot New York tabloid battle. Mostly, well…. READ MORE 2