JS spins its website

Or, putting your best face forward. This item showed up on the Journal Sentinel Daywatch online Monday morning:

By Avrum D. Lank

Newspaper circulation slips nationwide

Circulation of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel fell during the 6-month period ended April 30, in line with newspapers nationwide, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

For the period, the Journal Sentinel sold an average of 405,355 papers on Sunday and 235,704 Monday through Friday. Those are down 1.55% and 2.93%, respectively, from the 411,749 Sunday sales and 242,819 weekday sales in the same period a year earlier. Saturday numbers fell to 226,376 from 235,239. The numbers are subject to final audit.

Nationally, Sunday circulation was down 3.1% and weekday 2.6% from the same period a year earlier, according to an analysis of the ABC numbers by the Newspaper Association of America.

That headline didn't quite match the story, so they retooled both the story and headline to find a silver lining:

By Avrum D. Lank

Newspaper circulation slips, Web grows

Circulation of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel fell during the 6-month period ended April 30, in line with newspapers nationwide, according to figures released today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, while the popularity of its Web site, JSOnline, grew.

For the period, the Journal Sentinel sold an average of 405,355 papers on Sunday and 235,704 Monday through Friday. Those are down 1.55% and 2.93%, respectively, from the 411,749 Sunday sales and 242,819 weekday sales in the same period a year earlier. Saturday numbers fell to 226,376 from 235,239. The numbers are subject to final audit.

Nationally, Sunday circulation was down 3.1% and weekday 2.6% from the same period a year earlier, according to an analysis of the ABC numbers by the Newspaper Association of America.

In the past six months on JSOnline.com, the number of page views has grown 29% from 33.7 million in November to 43.6 million in April, with a monthly high of 47.6 million in March, according to data released by Michael Davis, senior editor for Journal Interactive. The number of unique visitors to JSOnline rose from 2.46 million in November to 2.93 million in April, according to Omniture Inc., a Web analytics company