By: E&P Staff In the wake of a $100 million lawsuit charging that Newsday of Melville, N.Y., artifically pumped up its circulation numbers in order to increase advertising revenues, the group that tracks newspaper distribution has offered to help the paper rework its counting procedures.
"At this point we've reached out to them to put in place additional testing procedures," a spokeswoman for the Audit Bureau of Ciculations told the New York Post. "It's very early in the process."
A spokesman for Newsday, however, said he was unaware of any such offer.
The class-action lawsuit, filed earlier this week in U.S. District Court in Central Islip, N.Y., alleges that Newsday artificially increased its distribution numbers over a period of 10 years. The charges were dismissed by Newsday's publisher as the actions of a disgruntled former employee.
The racketeering suit said Newsday told distributors to dump unsold papers and used a computer program called "Fudge ABC" to prepare false circulation numbers for the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The owners of four Queens businesses filed the suit, which includes Newsday, Spanish-language paper Hoy, the Tribune Publishing Co. and four distributors as defendants.
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