La Opinion, Daily Breeze tumble in lackluster circulation period. (Media & Technology).

As most of their local brethren held steady, circulation at two L.A.-area newspapers posted substantial declines for the six months ended Sept. 30, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

After reporting gains for seven straight reporting periods, circulation at La Opinion, Los Angeles' largest Spanish-language newspaper, fell 11 percent, to 114,331. Meanwhile, circulation at the Daily Breeze in Torrance fell by 8.5 percent.

Francisco Lozano, La Opinion's advertising and business development manager, said the drop was partially attributed to the paper intentionally cutting circulation in several outlying areas in order to better serve its core advertisers. Among those areas were the Antelope Valley, Bakersfield, San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico.

Still, Lozano acknowledged the drops in the latest period were deeper than expected.

"The summer is always a slow time, but this summer was a little slower," Lozano said. "Instead of being wider and greater, we're trying to sell more copies within our core audience."

Daily Breeze officials could not be reached for comment.

The newspaper showing the biggest gains locally was the Hollywood Reporter, the entertainment industry daily. In the past year, the Los Angeles-based Reporter has boosted its paid circulation to 25,650 copies, a gain of 7.5 percent. The Reporter's weekly edition, which appears on Tuesdays, had a bump to 38,035 paid copies, an increase of more than 16 percent.

Rick Wilkes, director of marketing and promotions, said the Reporter has engaged in an aggressive marketing campaign that has made use of direct mail, Internet advertising, targeted e-mail and partnerships with a variety of entertainment-related companies in which their products are packaged with subscriptions to the newspaper.

"A lot of it started before the current auditing period but the results really were evident in this period," Wilkes said. "The challenge is to keep the upward growth moving."

Little action

Other area newspapers were mostly flat. The Los Angeles Times fell 0.8 percent, to an average of 965,632 daily subscribers (daily circulation is the combined average of Monday through Saturday totals.) The Times boosted its Sunday circulation by about 7,500, to 1,376,932 copies.

Times spokeswoman Martha Goldstein said the numbers showed growth in the Thursday through Saturday editions, which was up slightly to a little over a million. "These are the days of the week that are of greatest interest to advertisers and that's where we've been focusing," Goldstein said.

An advertising downturn has hit most papers over the past year.

The Daily News of Los Angeles averaged 176,493 subscribers for the period, a gain of 0.3 percent from six months ago. Sunday circulation also rose slightly during the period.

Other papers owned by William Dean Singleton's MediaNews Group Inc. saw little change. The Pasadena Star-News upped its average daily circulation to 35,095, an increase of 0.5 percent over the year-earlier period. The San Gabriel Valley Tribune was basically unchanged, with average daily circulation of 48,574, about 200 newspapers fewer than in the year-earlier period.

"By and large the industry has been stable -- there are no real surprises," said Ron Wood, publisher of the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group, which includes the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, the Pasadena Star-News and the Whittier Daily News. "Considering all the challenges newspapers have for audience attention, stable is not such a bad thing."

Although there was little change at most papers, Wood cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions about the local market. He pointed out that variations from paper to paper are largely dependent on factors such as changing demographics, pricing and the local economy.

For example, the Orange County Register, which raised its newsstand price by a quarter to 50 cents in the past year, suffered one of the biggest circulation declines in Southern California. The Register averaged daily circulation of 300,888 for the six-month period, a dip of more than seven percent from a year earlier.

Flat Circulation

Most newspapers were little changed for the six months ended Sept. 30.

                            Avg. daily     %
Newspaper                   circulation  change

Los Angeles Times             965,632    -0.8%
Los Angeles Daily News        176,493     +0.3
La Opinion                    114,331      -11
Long Beach Press Telegram      93,595     +1.5
Torrance Daily Breeze          73,209     -8.4
San Gabriel Valley Tribune     48,574        0
Pasadena Star-News             35,095     +0.5
Hollywood Reporter             25,560     +7.5

Source: Audit Bureau of Circulations