New Yorkers queue to buy newspapers, 11/05/2008. Photo by Jeremy Zilar.

Barack Obama may have ushered in the future, but one of his coattails has a distinct must of the past: heavy print newspaper sales.

Brian Stelter of the New York Times tweets: “I’m hearing that we’re printing another 50,000 papers this afternoon for the P.M. rush.”

A friend in the DC area tells me papers are sold out, but then cautions “Today may be one of the few days left this century where a lot of people cared about having a newspaper”

But, as Steve Outing says, on Twitter, “Lots of print newspaper copies sold today. Great short-term boost, but souvenir sales won’t save the industry. What’s next could be sad.”

Take the windfall when you can, of course, but don’t think this is anything but a souvenir grab.

Update: Steve Outing reports the San Francisco Chronicle is selling “commemorative” issues at a hefty markup. Also The Sun’s Gus Sentementes tweets that The Washington Post and Atlanta Journal-Constitution are also running afternoon reprints/editions.

Update 2: If you’d rather just print your own, there’s a good collection here, chosen from a design perspective. And, as always, The Newseum has a comprehensive collection of front pages as well, though their flash module on the home page can’t be linked, so knock yourself out.

Update 3: Lots of good stuff on flickr. Who knew newspapers were the new sexy?

One more: Khoi Vinh has (of course) a nice shot and story about the reaction inside the New York Times to word that people were lining up for copies of the print edition: “People working on that floor hadn’t noticed yet that the line was forming, and when they realized its purpose, a feeling of delight swept over the newsroom like the friendliest wildfire I’d ever seen. Reporters, editors, photographers, everyone started clapping, hooting and hollering that people still find the newspaper valuable enough to wait dozens of people deep in line for their chance to buy a copy.”

He’s right, to a point. We do tend to dwell on the audited newspaper circulation numbers when they are reported twice yearly. But we do it largely because those are numbers that can directly affect a news organization’s ability to grow revenue. If circulation is up, newspapers traditionally have been able to charge more for ads. If it’s down, as it has been consistently in recent years, it adds to the revenue crisis by devaluing the printed product.

I’m a cheerleader for interactive, probably to a fault. After 12 years building the business, that’s my bias. But as much as online growth matters, print circulation matters just as much at the moment. Yes, digital audience is growing and digital revenues will carry news organizations forward, but due to the competitive environment online, there’s currently not nearly enough online income to make up for the shortfall on the print side.

So circ. matters, and I think it’s right to pay attention to the numbers.

But I’m puzzled by this piece of Baldwin’s argument:

Judging a newspaper by the number of copies in the market makes no more sense than counting the number of television sets to evaluate a TV station. To paraphrase a recent United States President, “It’s the audience, stupid!”

Counting distributed copies strikes me as the best – if not only – way to judge the effectiveness of the printed paper in reaching an audience. It’s not at all like counting TV sets; that analog would be counting newsstands or newspaper trucks. Counting circulation counts consumption of the print product. Whether a paper is paid or free, it’s essentially valueless until someone picks it up and reads it.

Newspaper companies have finally been reaching new people in new ways in the past decade, people who are establishing habits that may not include the printed newspaper at all. Interactive continues to be a substantial success and a growth engine in most markets. I get as frustrated as Matt Baldwin does that the stories about circulation declines – often written by print newsrooms – neglect to mention the enormous upside opportunities. But it’s far too soon to ignore print circulation – and its associated revenue – unless we’re ready to make the leap to an all-digital future.

And that’s a post for another day.

The Sun is typical of a mid-metro market newspaper in that even with the recent news, it remains the dominant media source for news, information and advertising in its market, but it has seen its position slip greatly over the years. When that slippage is reported in 6-month increments of a certain percentage, year-over-year, it’s hard to understand exactly how bad the story is. But, over time, the numbers are bracing.

The oldest reports currently available from ABC are from 1996, so that will be the base year.

In 1996, the Baltimore DMA had 906,100 occupied households. In the September, 1996 Audit Report, The Sun reports an average of 320,986 daily papers and 483,971 Sunday papers. In pure penetration numbers, that represents 35% for the daily and 58% for the Sunday. For every household in the Baltimore DMA, slightly more than one in three was touched by a daily Sun and a bit more than half of the households took a Sunday Sun.

Fast-forward to this week. Using population figures from the March 2008 Publisher’s Statement (not reported yet for September), there are 1,018,455 occupied households in the Baltimore DMA. In the September, 2008 figures reported by The Sun to ABC, the daily average for the paper was 218,923 and 350,640 on Sunday. By these numbers, daily household penetration had slipped to 21% and Sunday household penetration was at 39%.

Keeping in mind that the overall number of households in the Baltimore DMA grew 12% from 1996-2008, during this same period household penetration of the paper in the market dropped 40% on average on weekdays, and 33% on Sundays. While the Baltimore market added 112,355 households in that period, The Sun ended the period distributing 102,000 fewer papers on a typical weekday and 133,000 fewer papers on a typical Sunday.

Of course, in the same period, The Sun’s online audience went from nothing to more than three million visitors a month, from zero page views (The Sun’s web operation launched in September 1996) to more than 37 million a month in 2008. So it can be argued – credibly – that The Sun’s readership actually increased during the 12 years beginning in 1996.

But as robust as the online revenue stream is at The Sun and at similar metro news operations in other markets, the vast majority of revenue is still pegged to print. And when you look at the numbers across the past 12 years, it’s clear that local newspapers would be in a business-model crisis even without over-leveraged corporate owners or the current shaky economy.

Every indicator available to us says that print is not now and will not be the powerhouse driver of revenue it’s been historically. You can’t have your influence drop by 33-40% in 12 years and continue as if nothing’s changed. Slicing dollars and people off the cost structure isn’t enough. Newspapers need to start over, with a business model that acknowledges that the print cash cow has run dry and the digital future is still exchanging dollars for pennies as the audience and advertising moves.

Efforts like Jeff Jarvis’s recent summit on New Business Models for News and the News Innovation web site are good starts, but it’s time that we start treating this like the crisis it is.

Circulation is down, again, across the board at U.S. newspapers. According to the latest figures released this morning from the Audit Bureau of Circulation, overall daily circulation for the period ending September, 2008 was down 4.6%, and Sunday was down 4.8%

And these numbers were compiled before the financial panic of 2008. That will be taken into account in the numbers reported in March, 2009.

It’s time for creativity. Which major metro will transition to free distribution first? Who will convert to all-electronic? In any other business, this steady drumbeat of decline every six months would surely lead to a change in the gameplan that did more than redesign the packaging. Hint: A crisis gives you the cover to make bold moves, and this certainly qualifies as a crisis.