Cosmopolitan is the magazine with the highest-single copy circulation in the business. Meaning: It flies off of newsstands. But according to new numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Cosmo's down 7.8% over the first half of the year.

According to the NY Times:

Single-copy sales suffer more than subscriptions during recessions, as people refrain from impulse buys, and higher unemployment means fewer commuters passing newsstands.

But AdWeek has a different take: Ladymags might be growing more and more irrelevant. Lucia Moses writes:

Consumers can now get a wealth of style news and advice from any number of Web sites, blogs and TV programs. A further erosion of the fashion magazine editor's dominance has come from lifestyle and celebrity magazines, which over the years have been busy rolling out their own fashion content.

As a result, fashion editors have made the dismal discovery that slaving long hours to put out a magazine — however great an issue it might be-simply isn't enough anymore.

In addition, those "celebrity magazines," like Ok!, Life & Style and In Touch, aren't without their own problems. As MediaWeek reports, Ok!'s circulation was down about 10% the first half of the year and In Touch was down about 16%.

Then there's the mystique and allure of the magazine culture itself. A magazine editor used to be a know-it-all, a couture connoisseur, declaring items "in" or "out." These days, "real people" marketing campaigns are popular; YouTube makeup tips go viral and fashionistas are more likely to copy something from The Sartorialist than from Vogue. As AdWeek's Lucia Moses points out:

Even the famously aloof Anna Wintour has been making herself more accessible for interviews […] On September 10, Wintour herself is expected to be out rubbing elbows with the hoi polloi at a Macy's pop-up store in (of all places) Queens.

Magazines can be great, when well done: Beautiful photography, intelligent writing, a focused, edited point of view. Maybe a drop in sales doesn't signal the end — but a new beginning, in which some of the current titles are re-evaluated. Lord knows we don't need another "how to touch his junk" story.

Women's Magazines Fare Poorly in Latest Circulation Figures [NY Times]
The Delicate Balance [AdWeek]
ABC: Fashion Titles Hardest Hit for Single-Copy Sales [MediaWeek]

Earlier: The Real Reason Women's Magazines Suck
September Ladymags: "Looking Thin"
September Glossies: Same Sh*t, Different Year

Newsstand sales among the 70 biggest magazines in the U.S. fell 31% between 2001 and 2008, according to MediaPost. Though the number of subscriptions is usually higher, the number of newsstand sales is still considered an indicator of a magazine's health. Though most titles had their ups and downs over the last seven years, the trend was clear, as newsstand sales at 55 out of 70 titles declined.

Among the magazines with the biggest decline since 2001 were Glamour, down 41%; Marie Claire, Time, Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly, which were all down more than 50%; and Woman's Day and Redbook, which were down more than 65%. There were a few titles that saw an increase in sales, including The Economist (up 68%), Elle (up 14%), and men's magazines Esquire (33%) and GQ (15%).

The decline is generally blamed on the rise of the internet (duh). Most magazines put a portion of their content on the web, and apparently there are some blogs that post all the juicy bits from magazines online. But recent figures suggest it isn't just the internet cutting into magazine sales anymore. The decline accelerated in 2008 as consumers decided shelling out for magazines each month wasn't an essential part of their recession budget. While newsstand sales dropped 23% on average from 2001 to 2007, they dropped another 9% in 2008 alone.

In addition to established magazines seeing a drop in sales, for the first time the magazine death rate has exceeded the magazine birth rate, reports The New York Post. In the first quarter of this year, 101 magazines folded and only 95 new titles were launched. There's some disagreement over the numbers, but according to Trish Hagood, president of Oxbridge Communications, which publishes the Standard Periodical Director and the National Directory of Magazines, the number of new titles is on the decline. "Other than entrepreneurs, people are definitely being more cautious with launches," said Hagood.

Clearly the recession is taking a toll on sales across the board, but can the steady decline in magazine sales actually be blamed on the internet, or has the quality of their content been declining too? Is the internet now satisfying your need for magazines, or do you still yearn to flip through their glossy fluff-filled pages ?

Mag Bag: Newsstand Sales Fell 31% from 2001-2008 [MediaPost]
Cash-Starved Times Compared to Darfur [NY Post]