June 22, 2004, 09:13 PM
Newspapers caught inflating circulation
Alert reader Anne Linehan calls our attention to this article from Editor & Publisher, which reports on scandals over inflated circulation numbers at newspapers around the country:
It's been an embarrassing week for newspapers, especially for those in circulation departments at Newsday in Melville, N.Y. and at the Chicago Sun-Times. Both papers admitted, after markets closed for the day, to puffing circulation figures. And though the end results are the same, the two stories differ in how they got caught (or didn't).
The ABC audit revealed the problems at Newsday and Hoy back in February, John Payne, senior vice president of communications for Audit Bureau of Circulations, told E&P. ABC plans to release its findings in July, though the Tribune Co., which owns Newsday and Hoy, essentially pre-empted ABC by announcing the overstated figures yesterday.
“It's very unusual to talk about an audit that has not been released,” Payne commented. Newsday had inflated its circulation figures for the period ending September 2003 by approximately 40,000 daily copies and 60,000 Sunday copies, while Hoy jacked up its numbers by 15,000 and 4,000 respectively.
On Friday, according to a report at Newsday.com, Nassau County (N.Y.) District Attorney Denis Dillon announced that his office had opened an investigation to see if criminal charges are warranted. “When advertising costs are inflated, those costs are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices,” Dillon said.
[snip]
According to the Tribune Co., the two papers' inflated figures occurred because some copies that were distributed for free home delivery were counted as paid copies. And some single copy sales could not be verified because of inadequate record keeping by an outside distributor.
You don't think the Chronicle would inflate their figures by improperly counting all those extra copies they're throwing for free, and giving away at IHOP, and pushing off on transients on every street corner in town?
Surely Jeff Cohen wouldn't cook his books that way.
Pssst... Jeff... Free advice from your friends here at Chronically Biased. If your paper is doing this, it should stop. People are actually paying attention.
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