Los Angeles Times Reports March Circulation

Up front I will admit being partisan. I hate the Los Angeles Times. After two Los Angeles Times-promoted race riots and decades of ignoring corruption in Los Angeles, they have managed to turn that city into a Third World morass, in much the same way as the Washington Post has empowered corruption in Washington, DC and the Chicago Tribune annoints gangsters to government in Chicago. So it is with some joy that I can read that the Los Angeles Times circulation figures are in: a decline of 6.5% on Mon-Saturday and a decline of a whopping 7.9% on Sunday. Compare that to the industry-wide 1.9% decline and you get the size of the disaster for the Tribune, owner of the Chicago Tribune (itself down 6.6%)

(This has got to help though. Steve Wasserman has resigned as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review that has to be the laughingstock of the industry.)

Things are bad all over and are worse than the industry is admitting today. As the Denver Business Journal notes, the combined average paid circulation still includes copies paid for by advertisers or those distributed free to hotels.

The total average paid circulation includes copies of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News purchased at a discount or given away free and are listed as "other paid circulation" in the March 2005 report. The number of copies that fall under this category rose to 71,649, up from 48,885 in March 2004 -- an increase of 46.6 percent. [ Bolding mine ]

The March 2005 report from the Audit Bureau does not itemize these copies, but according to previous reports they include discounted copies, copies paid for by third party sponsors or those distributed to schools as part of educational programs, to hotel guests, restaurants, airlines and delivered to specific neighborhoods.

Newspapers can also count those papers given free to employees as well.

It's a nice scam.