Come fall, many of the nation's larger newspapers will be reporting marked circulation gains. This will certainly come as a surprise to many, considering figures released last week showing that newspaper circulation overall is down nationally. 
    The gains will not be the result of massive readership drives but rather a recent tweaking of the rules by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
    Under the new rules, papers are now allowed to include bulk circulation—papers sold to hotels and elsewhere at deep discounts—in their audited circulation totals.
     National newspapers like USA Today and The Wall Street Journal could get a significant spike as a result of the new system. Smaller dailies, which do relatively little bulk circulation, will likely continue to show circulation losses.
    But at least one media buyer thinks the changes are none for the good.
    "I think it’s a disaster. Newspapers are going to use it to try to increase their circulation figures, and obviously we’ll have to pass that extra cost on to advertisers," says Peter Gardiner, executive vice president and director of media services at Deutsch.
     Publishers have long been permitted to include newspapers sold at discounts up to 50 percent. Now the threshold is 75 percent.
     What media buyers find objectionable about the new rules is that bulk circulation is not broken out but rather lumped together with home delivery and other full-price distribution.
    "I think there’s value in bulk subscription, and USA Today has proved that over the years. But I think it’s got to be identifiable because not every subscriber is equal. There’s a reason they call it bulk," says Gardiner.
      ABC’s next report will also feature readership estimates for each paper, including  pass-along readers, another move the newspaper industry has been pushing for a long time.
     "It’s always going to benefit the publishers to have less and softer information rather than harder and more accurate information. Their argument is always going to be that nobody pays attention to circulation anyway. That’s true in a lot of places, but in other places, like the place I work, for instance, it matters."
     Again, having more data is never a bad thing for media buyers, says Gardiner. It just depends on how publishers wield the numbers at the negotiating table.
     "If it’s a well-done piece of research that could add another piece of information to what we have now, more power to them. If it’s just something to take attention away from the softening way they provide circulation numbers, who needs it?" says Gardiner.
    "It seems to me we ought to be going the other way with circulation. As it has become harder to market to consumers and maintain circulation, it looks like the industry is getting softer on how they report it."
    Still, one can hardly blame the newspaper industry for trying to gain some leverage.
    On top of well-publicized layoffs, increasing newsprint costs and a rotten advertising economy, newspaper publishers were greeted last week with the news that weekday circulation for the nation’s 1,500 dailies is down an average of 1 percent over the last year.
    Overall Sunday circulation fared worse, dropping 1.7 percent.
    The nation’s top three papers, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, all reported modest gains of less than 1 percent in circulation over ABC’s report a year ago.
    Top paper USA Today added about 15,000 copies, to weigh in at 1,852,592.
    After that the picture gets grimmer. The Los Angeles Times, the nation’s No. 4 daily, lost 4.8 percent of its circulation to settle in at 1,058,494. Half of the top 10 papers experienced circulation declines over the past year, losing an average of 2.3 percent.
    The largest gain among major dailies was registered by the San Francisco Chronicle.
    The Hearst-owned Chronicle, the beneficiary of an expanded newsroom and the implosion of the crosstown Examiner, now has a circulation of 527,466, an increase of 13.4 percent.
    The Dallas Morning News, despite a 0.8 percent gain in circulation up to 500,357, lost its No. 10 spot to the Chronicle.

May 9, 2001 © 2001 Media Life

-Gabriel Spitzer is a staff writer for Media Life.

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