Top U.S. monthly titles slump in first half newsstand sales

Newsstand sales of some of the top monthly U.S. titles are down significantly for the first six months of 2008, according to anAudit Bureau of Circulations report, reported by Portfolio media columnist Jeff Berkovici.

Hearst took some big hits, with newsstand sales of Good Housekeeping, Marie Claire and O, The Oprah Magazine all tumbling by double-digit percentages...Meanwhile, Hearst's most profitable title, Cosmopolitan, was "only" down 6.7 percent; I use scare quotes around "only" because that represents a disappearance of around 124,000 copies per issue.

At Condé Nast, Vogue was down 15.1 percent to 383,833 and Glamour dropped 10.4 percent to 676,466. Vanity Fair, which was up 5.8 percent for the half, averaging 375,666.

Ladies' Home Journal posted a gain of 24.5 percent, but that appears to be due to a program of selling discounted copies at Dollar Tree discount stores -- a program that was discontinued when Wal-Mart threatened this spring to throw Meredith Corporation titles off its racks for devaluing their products.