By: Lucia Moses Paper Subtracts Bonus Days
The Los Angeles Times has restated its latest circulation figures as
it shifts away from using bonus days, the practice of delivering the
daily paper to Sunday-only subscribers to entice them to expand their
subscription.
After the restatement, the L.A. Times' reported daily circulation for
the six months ended March 31 becomes 1,111,785, up 1.2%. The L.A.
Times previously had claimed a 5% increase in daily circulation,
giving it the third biggest percentage gain among major U.S. dailies.
After the restatement, the L.A. Times falls to No. 9 in percentage
gain.
Sunday circulation declines .08% to 1,384,688 after the restatement;
before, it was up 0.2%.
'While the Los Angeles Times met all criteria for paid circulation in
the March statement, in the future, our plan is to be more judicious
in the use of bonus days,' Times Publisher John Puerner said in a
statement. 'Therefore, we are retroactively reducing the number of
bonus days in the March statement so that we have a consistent
standard to measure our success.
'Going forward, we will use bonus days sparingly to support specific
advertising products or around key holidays that advertisers have
identified for additional distribution, or to expose non-readers to
special editions of our newspaper,' Puerner said.
For the six-month period, the L.A. Times decided not to count 10 bonus
days: nine market-wide and one in Orange County.
The L.A. Times said the change doesn't affect the March circulation
figure for La Opini?n, the independent Spanish-language paper that is
bundled with the L.A. Times.
La Opini?n, partly owned by L.A. Times parent Times Mirror, saw daily
sales grow from 100,327 to 108,309, an increase of 7.9%.
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