Newspaper Circ: 'WSJ' Gains as 'NY Post' Tumbles

Rupert Murdoch may be losing the tabloid war, but he suddenly has a pretty good comeback next time someone accuses him of ruining The Wall Street Journal.

If I'm making such a hash of it, he could say, why is it the only big newspaper in America that's growing?

Okay, "growing" might be an overstatement. But according to the latest semi-annual report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Journal is alone among the top 25 U.S. newspapers in reporting higher weekday circulation for the six months ending March 31, 2009, than for the same period a year earlier. Its circulation of 2,082,189 constituted a 0.6 percent increase.

That still leaves the Journal as the country's second-biggest paper. USA Today is No. 1, but its weekday circulation was down 7.5 percent in the period -- a decline it has attributed to lower occupancy at hotels, where it gives away lots of free copies.

The New York Times (-3.6 percent), the Washington Post (-1.2 percent), the Los Angeles Times (-6.6 percent), the Chicago Tribune) (-7.5 percent) and Newsday (-3 percent) all slid, but not as sharply as New York's twin tabloids. Mort Zuckerman's New York Daily News was down 14.3 percent, to 602,857 copies, while Murdoch's Post plunged 20.6 percent, to 558,140, as the paper recorded its first full circulation period since raising its cover price to 50 cents last summer.