NAA President and CEO John Sturm Comments on ABC FAS-FAX Report

Arlington, Va. - John F. Sturm, president and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, issued the following statement on today's release of the Audit Bureau of Circulations FAS-FAX report.

"Today's report marks the culmination of a three-year process in which newspaper publishers and the advertisers that make up two-thirds of ABC's Board of Directors worked in tandem with ABC to modify paid circulation reporting to more accurately reflect newspapers' total audience, and the broad portfolio of newspaper products available in today's marketplace.

The new definitions and formats reflect changes in the way publishers market their newspapers to readers, allowing newspaper companies to more accurately portray the powerful audiences they deliver across a multitude of print, digital and mobile platforms. This fresh approach provides advertisers with more transparency and market data than ever before, delivering the very information they have identified as critical to making better buying decisions in today's environment.

Newspapers continue to develop new audiences of quality consumers that they can effectively deliver to advertisers. These important changes to ABC reporting come as data from Scarborough Research indicates continued vitality for the newspaper business. According to their latest figures*, more than 105.5 million people read a newspaper in print or online on an average weekday - and more than 164 million did so in the past week. In addition, the latest data from comScore found that newspaper websites attracted 108.3 million unique visitors per month on average in this year's first quarter - nearly two-thirds (63.9 percent) of all adult Internet users."

* USA+ Study (Release 2, 2010)

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing nearly 2,000 newspapers and their multiplatform businesses in the U.S. and Canada. NAA members include daily newspapers, as well as non-dailies, other print publications and online products. Headquartered near Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Va., the Association focuses on the major issues that affect today's newspaper industry: public policy/legal matters, advertising revenue growth and audience development across the medium's broad portfolio of products and digital platforms. Information about NAA and the industry also may be found at www.naa.org.