That was the question from one of the people participating in this mornings online give-and-take between readers of the Flint Journal and the new Editor. Unfortunately I was busy this morning and unable to monitor the whole exchange which is available here.
Following is the brief exchange (and the time it occurred):
10:44
[Comment From FlintRiverMan]How many subscribers does the Journal currently have?
10:45
To be honest, I'm not positive. But I'd say it's around 100,000 on Sunday and less than that daily.
Here is the answer (as of 9/30/2008) from the Audit Bureau of Circulaton: (This is a copy of what is on the website):
US NEWSPAPER - SEARCH RESULTS
Search Type: United States
Circulation averages for the six months ended:9/30/2008
State: Michigan
Selection: Flint (Contains)
Sort By: Daily ASC
Results Found: 3
Preliminary figures subject to audit as filed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations.* Total Circulation = Total Average Paid Circulation
Publication Name
Frequency
Circulation Type
Total Circulation*
Filing Status
JOURNAL, FLINT (GENESEE CO.)
AVG E (M-F)
DLY
73,013
JOURNAL, FLINT (GENESEE CO.)
SAT M
DLY
74,876
JOURNAL, FLINT (GENESEE CO.)
SUN
DLY
88,897
I guess 88,897 is "around 100,000" if you give or take ten percent. And you certainly can't argue that 73,013 and 74,876 is less than 100,000. That's not going to look good on the daily chart of reporter and editor errors. It's kind of hard to believe that the editor of a newspaper wouldn't have those figures pretty well memorized.
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6 comments:
geez...is that ALL you do is complain...Must have missed your opportunity while you work there...now you sit back and just collect your nice pension...You pull that ONE statement out of the chat this morning...this is after encouraging current and former employees to take part in the chat. I swear the best your blog page has looked was a couple of days ago when it was blank
So for that time period they averaged 1863 extra papers sold for the morning Saturday paper compared to Monday through Friday's afternoon edition.
That's a extra 9315 papers sold for per week if they went to all morning delivery.
And a extra 484,380 papers for the year.
That's a pretty good chunk of change there and let's face it there would be a bigger difference in sales with a morning Monday through Friday because there's not much in that Saturday paper unless you die, are getting married, have been married for a 25 or more years, or want to read the religious section.
Dear anonymous 14:23:
Actually, I complained a lot when I worked there, ask anyone.
If less than $1,000 a month is a "nice pension" I guess I got one.
Yes, I pulled one statement out, but I also left a link so you could go see the whole conversation.
Why do you come here? I must be doing something right.
If the ABC numbers are an accurate count of todays true circ then my site is doing great! Come on! we all know that any circ director worth a hill of beans knows how to have more freebie/trade give away programs to bump their numbers and save their back-side.
We should all accept that all 8 Michigan properties are in very bad shape and all face a three day a week print cycle killing the almighty job pledge.
Sorry to be so bleak but the quicker we all see what is happing the quicker we can get out.
To be fair, the mid year audit is not the gold standard of measurement. The 12 month audit is the biggie, and 2008's is not ready yet. Last year's sunday was near 100K. I would recommend that he not guess if he doesn't know, but that would have looked worse, I'm thinking.
So the editor of the Flint Journal tells readers he doesn't know the paper's circulation numbers, but thinks it's about 100,000 on Sunday? Now that is what I call one big ol' lie.
It's rather like his positions that the newspaper's reporting staff hasn't been wiped out with buyouts, that they are doing a great job covering the news of Gensee County and that they continue to do "investigative reporting." That's a royal hoot. They don't, of course. Filing a bunch of FOIs with school districts and local governments isn't investigative reporting.
Not only that, Jim, your reporting of the real 88,000-89,000 ABC figure on Sunday circulation, while truthier than the editor's ridiculous "guess," is very certainly puffed up like a blow toad.
I always understood that the Journal, like other papers, counts giveaways, promotions, Newspapers in Education and other B.S. to inflate their numbers. It sounds like all papers do it, but it's amusing to see the editor clinging to the 100,000 Sunday figure when it's obviously not true.
Just as the paper's drivers and cirulation/route managers what's going on. They won't be guessing when they tell you about the real declines.
J.T. Cornpone
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