By: Mark Fitzgerald By itself, the Chicago Tribune's print edition sells not quite a half-million copies on average, Mondays through Fridays. But include the Trib's full portfolio of print products, ranging from a Spanish-language daily to a weekly for high schoolers, and the weekday average jumps to 779,747.
On Friday, the Trib became the first paper to have its portfolio-wide circulation analyzed under the Audit Bureau of Circulations' (ABC) "Consolidated Media Report (CMR)."
CMR for the first time documents the total circulation of all products a publisher has in a particular market.
"The Consolidated Media Report allows publishers to highlight the strengths of their diversified product portfolio," Chicago Tribune Media Group President and CEO Tony Hunter said in a statement. "As we continue to expand our niche and online capabilities, this first-of-its-kind reporting is an important tool in providing advertisers comprehensive information about our products and marketplace reach. Moving forward, this report will be a large part of Chicago Tribune Media Group's solution-based, business-to-business marketing efforts."
The report shows the Tribune sells 1,268,784 on an average weekend.
That figure includes the 858,256 copies of the print and electronic Chicago Tribune, plus the circulations of its home-delivered by request RedEye weekend edition, and the targeted free Fin de Semana Spanish-language product.
On Thursdays, Trib products have a total circ of 906,886, including the flagship Tribune, the free dailies Hoy and RedEye and The Mash, a weekly distributed at Chicago public high schools.
The first page of the CMR displays print and electronic circulations. The second displays print readership and Web site usage data in an enhanced Audience-FAX display box. In the case of the Tribune, that box includes information about the Chicago Tribune, RedEye and Hoy.
"The Consolidated Media Report is yet another example of ABC's efforts to innovate and evolve with the changing newspaper industry," Mike Lavery, ABC's president and managing director, said in a statement. "It joins other ABC reports and services like Audience-FAX, the Preprint Projection Center and IVS in complementing traditional circulation reports to provide a broader picture of a newspaper's overall reach in the markets it serves."
CMS was approved for testing at the July 2008 ABC board of directors meeting. The Tribune volunteered to participate in the audit program as part of ABC's initial beta test. All of the products included on a CMR must be owned and operated by an ABC member, and ABC auditors must independently verify all of the data.
ABC said each CMR will be unique, with the layout varying from newspaper to newspaper to fit the needs of the each individual publisher.
A sample prototype is available on ABC's Web site, www.accessabc.com.
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