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Inflated
Circulation Numbers
From El Diario
June 18, 2004
By Ana Ledo
The company that owns the newspapers Newsday and Hoy admitted last
night that it had reported circulation numbers that were higher
than the actual numbers.
From September of this past year, the
company inflated the circulation numbers by almost 15 percent.
In its circulation report, the Spanish newspaper Hoy had reported
15,000 copies more than the real number for its daily editions
and exaggerated 4,000 copies for its Sunday edition, according
to what Newsday announced on June 17.
Hoy of the Tribune Company
had reported a distribution of 92,604 editions daily and 33,198
on Sundays.
Along the same likes was the Long Island newspaper
Newsday, of the same company, which also exaggerated its daily
circulation
by 40,000 copies and its Sunday circulation by 60,000.
"We are taking this subject very seriously," said the
general manager of Newsday, Raymond Jansen, adding that "these
discrepancies got our attention, they mobilized us to rapidly correct
the situation
and we are instituting new policies to prevent this from occurring
again."
In the month of February a lawsuit was filed in the
federal court of New York against both publications for manipulating
their sale
numbers with the intention of making their advertisers pay higher
prices for their ads.
The company announced that for the month
of September 2003, they would lower the number reported for its
daily edition (92,604)
by 15,000, and the number reported for its Sunday edition (33,198)
by 4,000.
Newsday indicated that as a result of an audit, its vice-president
of circulation, Robert Brennan, had been placed in an administrative
role.
A few days ago, Hollinger reported that its newspaper, the
Chicago Sun-Times had presented exaggerated circulation numbers
to the
Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC), but the exact number of the
inflation and when it occurred were not specified.
The newspaper
Hoy is distributed in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Until
the closing of this edition, they intended to obtain
the reactions of the general manager of Hoy, Louis Sito; and of
Jack Fuller, general manager of the Chicago Tribune, but they had
not returned calls at press time.
For his part, the General Manager
of EL DIARIO/LA PRENSA, Rossana Rosado, said in a declaration that "it
is an unfortunate situation that is facing Newsday and Hoy. It
is also unfortunate for the
industry, if we take into account the recent declarations against
the Chicago Sun-Times."
"It surprised us, nevertheless, that Newsday and Hoy have taken
responsibility for having inflated their circulation numbers, and
we hope that this prolonged practice stops here, and that they
clarify what is the actual circulation."
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Translated from Spanish by Charlotte
Triggs.
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