After Dallas Revelations, ABC Expects Other Papers May Admit Circ Miscues

By: Jennifer Saba Following the latest faulty circulation report, this time from The Dallas Morning News, the Audit Bureau of Circulations is anticipating that more papers will follow suit. "Do we expect more to come forward? Yes," said Martha Dittmar, spokesperson for ABC, adding it's always a possibility.

The recent Newsday, Hoy, and Chicago Sun-Times scandals prompted many newspaper executives to do a clean sweep of circ, likely resulting in a string of confessions, large or small. John Morton of Morton Research said that more newspapers would find discrepancies because of internal housekeeping. "Probably every publisher in America is investigating their circulation departments to make sure there is no wrong-doing," he said.

ABC plans to start its regularly scheduled audit for the year ending March 2004 for the Morning News in a few weeks, Dittmar confirms. But she says it's too soon to tell what kind of remedial action the organization would take until the audit is complete.

For the Morning News, the overstatement of numbers, an admitted 1.5% daily and 5% Sunday in recent FAS-FAX reports, guarantees an additional downward spiral of circulation at the paper. The paper expects to report September 2004 numbers that will plummet 5% for daily and 11% for Sunday.

In terms of an ABC censure, it's unlikely the 1.5% will even show up on the radar, assuming that number is correct. ABC reports all variances between the Publisher's Statement and audit reports.

However, the 5% increase will give the board pause. That number was the minimum for slapping papers with any number of censures that the board developed this summer. Carey Hendrickson, vice president of investor relations at Belo, suspects that the paper will at least have to undergo an audit every six months. (One of the rules established states that a paper caught inflating numbers would have to undergo audits every six months for two years).

Correction: Due to incorrect information provided by ABC, an earlier version of this story misstated that the ABC only reports variances of 2% or more between the Publisher's Statement and audit reports. ABC said Tuesday that it reports all variances.