Still Cooking the Books

As I've written before, the ability of newspaper circulation departments and publishers to spin good news from bad by deftly manipulating dodgy circulation numbers knows no bounds. And as things get ever more desperate in the newspaper business, the number cookers are getting ever more creative.

Witness this report from Michael Liedtke of the AP (oh, is he ever going to be unpopular with his wire service's members, and extra credit: that link goes to a Google News page!) about the latest example of creative accounting: double-counting readers of electronic editions who also happen to pay for the print copy. This turns out to be perfectly legal under the Audit Bureau of Circulations' conveniently flexible rules, even though it inflates circulation numbers.

If not for these rules, the industry's numbers would look even worse. Average weekday circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers fell 10.6 percent during the six months ending in September. That was the steepest decline ever recorded by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the organization that verifies how many people are paying to read publications.

Yikes. Liedtke isn't the first to raise questions about the quality and veracity of the latest circulation numbers. The estimable Alan Mutter put up some red flags a few weeks ago, as well.

Publishers managed to make matters worse by taking unprecedented liberties with the way they tally the discount circulation that represents a significant percentage of the readership at many papers. ...

The consequence of the change in the discounting rule is that circulation figures are all over the map. … 

The inconsistent circulation data is bound to not merely confound advertisers but also cut into the industry’s fragile credibility with them.

Of course, as Liedtke reports, nobody seems too upset that the numbers are getting less believable all the time. The papers are just playing by the rules set by the ABC, which gets steadily more pliable to keep its publisher customers happy. Nobody likes to hear bad news, after all. Or, in the case of newspaper circulation, really bad news.

It's not just print numbers that are getting fuzzy, either. Former WashingtonPost.com editor Jim Brady and others are tweeting up a storm tonight about murky online numbers, as well—which, as anybody who's ever worked with Web analytics knows, can be a black art—at best. "There are just as many games played with pageviews and unique visitors as newspapers play with circ," Jim tweets, and then asks: "Interesting Q for us Web-heads off the news about paper circ shadiness: Are we making the same mistake blindly chasing unique visitors?"

Interesting Q indeed. Fudging the numbers may make internal constituencies happy (and make bonuses attainable), but they'll bite you in the long run. Advertisers can count, too. And print newspapers already are paying the price for not delivering the results to advertisers they've long promised. Online stats should be more reliable. As in so many other things, news sites would best be served by not lapsing into bad counting habits inherited from the print side.

Comments

[Rplothow]

Here's what I don't understand. Yes, the new ABC rules are goofy (but they are transparent -- nobody's fooling anybody), but why are people apoplectic that newspapers now want to count their Web "circulation?" The people complaining about this seem to be the same ones who think newspapers have been too slow and awkward in embracing the Internet.

So, please, complain away, but perhaps you'd like to offer a potential solution or two?

P.S. Circulation audits have never been perfect, but my competitors have no audits whatsoever. Which is better?

[Mark Potts]

Counting (paid) Web circulation alongside print is fine. It's double-counting it that makes no sense.

[Rplothow]

Of course it doesn't. But you don't want us to use the numbers from web analytics, either (despite the fact that people are, indeed, reading us online). So, we publishers, who so delight in dodgy numbers, are trying very hard to figure out how to work our way through this particularly challenging time. What is increasingly hard for me to fathom is why so many "recovering journalists" like you and Alan Mutter and others (many of whom you seem to consider "essential reading") take such delight in our difficulties. Taking potshots is very easy; finding solutions is far more difficult.

[Mark Potts]

I've spent most of the past two decades actively looking for solutions through innovation, and I work at it every day as CEO of GrowthSpur—which is helping local publishers large and small to develop revenue streams—and as an advisor to various media and internet companies. I'd be happy to talk more to you about those efforts offline.

I can't speak for Alan Mutter, but as an industry veteran, I'm frustrated by publishers who think the solution is to somehow juggle the numbers, whine about new competitors rather than trying to compete with (or gasp, partner with) them, live in the past and hide from reality rather than truly innovating to find solutions to the industry's problems. That's the source of my criticism. There's no delight in it whatsoever.

[Rplothow]

In that event, you and I apparently agree on a great deal. Until about 10 years ago, it took no great skill to run a newspaper profitably. That is no longer the case, and that's not a bad thing. I do believe that good newspapers are important to their local communities and the key to their survival, aside from finding sustainable business models, is good journalism.

I met Alan Mutter at the Media Technology Summit and we swapped stories over pinot noir. His constant pot-shotting frustrates me. I know Dave Chase pretty well -- he and I met several times about a potential collaboration in Sun Valley last year. He's a smart man but I could never quite catch his vision. Steve Outing is particularly perplexing to me -- his columns are cartoonish and never propose real solutions.

Newspaper publishers might be more interested in looking for partners (as I am) from people who aren't so apparently dismissive of our own passion and intelligence.

You may (or may not) be interested in my takes on all this: http://www.gumpole.blogspot.com/