TODAY'S LETTERS: Scarborough Responds to FAS-FAX Story and 'NYT' Columnists Debate Continues

By: E&P Staff Readers wrote in today about the recent Audience-FAXreports as well as The New York Times columnists.

First FAS-FAX Numbers: Many Top Papers Take Big Hits

The article ?Audience-FAX Ponders A More Perfect Metric? would benefit from further clarification. This is a new and complex initiative and I would like to take the opportunity to explain it further.

The article states that Audience-FAX ??methodology puts papers at a disadvantage in comparison to other media measurements.? There are two points of clarification. First, Audience-FAX does not have its own distinctive methodology. The data within the report and database comes from three contributing sources, employing three different methodologies: circulation data from the ABC, newspaper print and website audience information from Scarborough Research (and, in some cases, other comparable sources), and web traffic measures from firms such as Nielsen//NetRatings and Omniture. Each of these sources has its own distinctive methodology.

Further, newspapers are NOT put at a disadvantage with Audience-FAX. Quite the contrary. The inclusion of audience data facilitates a level playing field when newspapers are compared with other established media, such as television and radio, which are also routinely evaluated on the basis of audience. Audience-FAX is significant because newspaper audience data is more important than ever, as it helps publishers and advertisers discern and demonstrate the size and composition of newspaper audiences.

The website audience metrics also require clarification. Audience-FAX contains two online metrics from Scarborough Research: 1. a past-seven day online readership number, 2. a past-30 day online readership number. During a panel discussion at the recent ABC Annual Conference on Nov. 8, Bob Cohen, president of Scarborough Research, stated that newspapers are using both metrics. The 30-day website number is more common to the digital community; whereas the 7-day number is more common to newspapers. At the request of the newspaper industry, Audience-FAX contains both metrics.

The final point I would like to make is about Saturday readership. The potential inclusion of the Saturday readers within Audience-FAX would impact the total audience minimally. This is due to the limited number of Saturday-only newspaper readers. (Please note that Saturday readership is measured by Scarborough in some local markets but is not a standard measurement across the industry.)

Audience-FAX is an initiative that truly levels the playing field for newspapers to facilitate comparisons with other media. It represents the best interests of advertisers, their agencies, and all of those involved in the buying and selling of media. Scarborough Research has a long tradition in the newspaper industry, and is an enthusiastic participant in this effort.

Deirdre McFarland
VP, Marketing and Communications
Scarborough Research


Columnists War Continues at 'NYT' -- As Brooks, Krugman, Herbert Do Battle

Thanks for your fine article on David Brooks' shameless attempt to rewrite history. The NY Times' right-wing columnist's efforts to erase Ronald Reagan's record of racist pandering are despicable. Why the NY Times editors continue to publish Brooks' apologetics for right wing hate-mongering and corruption will long be debated by journalists and scholars. But for me, publishing Brooks' nonsensical but carefully contrived propaganda is as wrong as publishing the screeds of Neo-Nazi "historian" David Irving.

The Holocaust-denying revisionist has argued that Hitler was trying to help the Jews by deporting them - not to extermination camps - but to their own land in Africa. Hitler, Irving insisted, was "the best friend"
the Jews had in the Third Reich.

Seeing Brooks claim that race-baiter Reagan was actually attempting to court black votes after the 1980 convention leaves me as shocked and as angry as when I read Irving's most despicable comments.

Thank you again for your coverage of this conflict in Editor & Publisher.

Andrew Skolnick
Amherst, N.Y.


I think the appropriate term for your reporting of this squabble is provocative?and I hope it provokes at least a rethink and hopefully a mea-culpa from Brooks. But I?m not holding my breath.

Keep up the good work-- I appreciate your wry views of the world, and your writing IMO is usually pretty good stuff.

John Rice