August 6, 2008
Today’s Peninsula Metropolis Daily, a daily newspaper whose distribution is limited to Qingdao, a coastal city in Shandong Province, ran a big headline celebrating the newspaper’s recent ascent to “the 55th strongest newspaper of the world.”
The headline (“strongest”) is a little misleading because the ranking mentioned is based only on circulation number, giving papers in populous countries like India and China an edge and enabling the boring and unread People’s Daily to easily beat any American newspaper.
The ranking is allegedly from a recent report released by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). In the 2005 WAN rankings, Reference News (参考消息) was ranked eighth worldwide in terms of circulation, while People’s Daily came in ninth.
The statistics quoted by the Peninsula Metropolis Daily shows that the Reference News has moved ahead to fifth place, while People’s Daily is still number nine.
Beijing’s newspapers fared badly in the rankings. Despite the city’s constant boast that it has a more educated population than any other city, the only Beijing newspaper on the list is Beijing Evening News, which ranked 72, behind many other Chinese regional newspapers.
According to the list, the top Chinese regional newspaper in term of circulation is the Nanjing-based Yangtse Evening Post at #21, followed by three Guangzhou-based newspapers: Guangzhou Daily, Information Times, and New Express.
Although Danwei could not confirm the authenticity of the ranking, several blunders make the article seem less than trustworthy: There is no way that one newspaper could appear on the same list twice, but the New York Times does, at 45th and 93th place.
Southern Metropolis Daily, ranked 29th in 2005, has totally disappeared from this year’s top 100 as reported in the article.
- Peninsula Metropolis Daily (Chinese): World newspaper circulation rankings released; PMD ranks 55
- Earlier on Danwei: China is world’s largest newspaper market
- Xinhua (Chinese): 28 Chinese newspapers on the list of circulation