By: Mark Fitzgerald The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has informed Dallas Morning News parent Belo Corp. that it has closed its investigation into the inflated circulation uncovered in 2004 and is not recommending any enforcement action against the company, Belo disclosed in a SEC filing Wednesday.
Belo was one of several newspaper companies notified three years ago that it was under investigation as part of the SEC's industrywide probe of circulation practices. Belo said in its filing Wednesday that it had voluntarily provided the SEC with information about circulation practices at the Morning News and two other of its dailies, The Providence (R.I.) Journal and The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif.
Belo said its attorneys received a letter Oct. 1 informing them that the SEC staff had completed its inquiry, and would not recommend any enforcement action.
In the summer of 2004 -- as Tribune Co. was disclosing massive circulation fraud at Newsday and its New York edition of Hoy, and the Chicago Sun-Times was reporting it and its sibling Daily Southtown in Chicago had similarly inflated circulation for several years -- Belo revealed it had overstated Morning News by 5% on Sundays and 1.5% on weekdays for a six-month period in 2003.
Largely as a result of the blow to business that followed, the Morning News later in 2004 shed about 150 employees, including 65 in the newsroom.
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