Sun-Times Overstated Circulation

By Margaret Lyons in News on Jun 16, 2004 6:41PM

There are two kinds of people in Chicago. Sox fans and Cubs fans? Hah. Try Sun-Times people and Tribune people. Yesterday, Sun-Times folks took a serious blow when Hollinger International, the paper’s parent company, announced that it had overstated the Sun-Times's circulation for the last several years, which artificially inflated advertising rates. According to the Tribune,

Executives at the newspaper wouldn't comment on specific findings of its internal investigation. But sources close to the paper said the Sun-Times had overstated its daily newsstand sales by at least 25 percent, or more than 78,000 copies a day, for at least two years and possibly longer.
That would mean that the Sun-Times' reported 481,798 average Monday-Friday circulation actually should be about 403,000 copies. ...
[T]he circulation scheme involved counting as sold papers that never got into readers' hands, one source said.
"Tens of thousands of papers were going out in the morning and coming back at night," said the source, a former top executive at the Sun-Times.

Oh, they are definitely peeing in their newspants over at the Tribune right now. Information about the inflated numbers started surfacing after April 1, when the Sun-Times raised prices from 35 cents to 50.

According to the Trib, circulation padding is not uncommon in the industry; Newsday, a Long Island paper that is part of the Tribune Company, was sued by advertisers for misrepresenting circulation information earlier this year.

This scandal comes at a sticky time for Hollinger, already ass-deep in problems from unauthorized payments to former Chief Executive Conrad Black and Sun-Times Publisher David Radler. Black and Radler stepped down in November, but Black is still the controlling shareholder, and sources close to him suggested to the Trib that the announcement of the inflated circulation was an attempt to discredit him and Radler. Um, it’s working?

Hollinger is trying to sell off its papers, and a deal to sell London's Daily Telegraph is expected in the next few days; the company tried to sell the Sun-Times but no one wanted it. But now? Oh, we think people will be all over that funk. What with the lying and low circulation and all.

Chicagoist thinks newspaper scandals are way too fun because newspapers have to write about their own shit (big ups, Jayson Blair), and it becomes this cute little honesty dance. The Sun-Times has to write about what happened because otherwise it’ll look like the’re hiding something, but they can’t write too much about it because then they’ll look like assholes. The Trib wants to write about it because something crapped on their enemies, and that’s funny, but they can’t write too much about it because it will look like they’re gloating. Which it kind of seems like they are.