# What's the most popular name for newspapers? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 25, 2003, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-popular-name-for-newspapers/215231 "2003-11-25T18:58:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Interrobang](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/interrobang/32/17463_2.png) [@Interrobang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Interrobang)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2003, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-popular-name-for-newspapers/215231/1 "2003-11-25T18:58:47Z")
There are a few generic names that are common to many newspapers. There’s a Times, for example, in London, New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Washington, New York, Denver and Bangkok have a Post. Lots of smaller towns have Gazettes, and Phoenix used to have one. And if you include compound names, those get even more popular – Seattle’s got the Post-Intelligencer, Chicago’s got the Sun-Times, etc. So what name is the most common in the newspaper world? Times? Post? Dispatch? Courier? Journal? Something else? There’s got to be a statistic on this somewhere. A list of the most popular in order would be even cooler. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2003, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-popular-name-for-newspapers/215231/2 "2003-11-25T20:39:17Z")
[Kidon Media Link](http://www.kidon.com/media-link/usa.shtml) indexes just about every newspaper in the U.S. that has a web presence. Within the state lists of news outlets, look for “NP” to the left of the title that indicates a newspaper. My guess is that it will be a close race between “News” and “Times”, with “Journal” in third place. ---
**Author:** ![timgregory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@timgregory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/timgregory)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2003, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-popular-name-for-newspapers/215231/3 "2003-11-25T22:22:11Z")
I think there is a flaw in your question – do you mean major papers, or all papers? I used to have a job where I had to mail things to newspapers, and I found that most cities had at least one of each (Journal/Record/Post/Times/Register/etc.), but that many would have smaller circulations. For example, the big paper in the big city near you might be the Springfield Record, with a daily circ of 90k, but there’s probably the smaller Springfield Post-Herald with a daily circ of 15k, and the weekly Springfield Shopper with a circ of 4k. And the definition of ‘Major’ papers is fuzzy as well: there is a Washington Post, which gets about a million readers daily, and the Washington Times, which gets about 100k. 100k is still a pretty big newspaper, but it’s not thought of being as massive as the Post. Historically most cities had 2 major papers, but for various reasons, (not the least of which is the expansion of Gannett, which uses Walmart-style tactics to crush smaller papers.) this is not the case any more. For what it’s worth… Among the top 100 newspapers by circulation, there are: 19 News (4 of which are Daily News) 12 Journal 10 Times 10 Post 8 Tribune 6 Star 6 Herald 5 Sentinel 5 Press 3 Gazette 3 Dispatch 3 Review 3 Sun 3 Union 2 Chronicle 2 Bee 2 Register 2 Telegram 2 Observer 1 Globe 1 Blade 1 Advertiser etc… The list I used is here: [http://www.accessabc.com/reader/top100.htm](http://www.accessabc.com/reader/top100.htm) and remember that this includes compound names like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and that some papers team up for Sunday papers, which gives them a higher circulation than they’d get the rest of the week. ---
**Author:** ![timgregory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c57346/32.png) [@timgregory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/timgregory)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2003, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-the-most-popular-name-for-newspapers/215231/4 "2003-11-25T22:24:48Z")
oh yeah, I only used US papers, because I couldn’t find a list of international – plus I don’t know as much about them!