Pardon me if I don’t shead a tear. I stopped subscribing when they started obviously making, not covering, the news. I could stand partisanship, but not crap just made up. Needless to say, I’ve not been a subscriber for a while. And they’re not alone:

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released circulation numbers for more than 700 daily newspapers this morning for the six-month period ending September 2007. Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation (see chart, separate story), only four showed gains.

According to an analysis of ABC figures, for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617. For 609 papers that filed on Sunday, overall circulation dropped 3.5% to 46,771,486. The percentages are based on comparisons from the same period a year ago and represent the majority of the paper’s reporting into ABC — less than half in the country.For The New York Times, daily circulation fell 4.51% to 1,037,828 and Sunday plunged 7.59% to 1,500,394, at least partly due to a price increase.

Daily circulation at The Washington Post was down 3.2% to 635,087 and Sunday was down 3.9% to 894,428.

There’s a whole bunch of other numbers there, but it’s clear that if you’re paper’s circulation has stabilized, you’re lucky.