Posted on: Wednesday, August 29, 2001
Star-Bulletin circulation claims questioned
Advertiser Staff
For the first time under its new ownership, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin has released circulation figures for its new Sunday edition, which debuted in April.
But the nation's leading media-auditing organization has said the report, as well as some other material being distributed, violates the agency's publicity rules.
The statement by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) was based on a complaint by The Honolulu Advertiser, the Star-Bulletin's chief rival in the battle for Hawai'i's newspaper readers and advertisers.
In distributed materials, the Star-Bulletin said it had average paid Sunday circulation of 85,072 from April through June. The numbers are lower than circulation projections made by the Star-Bulletin's new owner, Canadian publisher David Black, when he took over the newspaper in March. Black said then that he expected to print about 130,000 Sunday newspapers.
The Star-Bulletin did not release figures on its current daily circulation.
The Sunday figure, which the Star-Bulletin described as "paid circulation," included 18,000 "controlled circulation" copies. No "controlled circulation" category exists in standard ABC reports for newspapers.
In an Aug. 16 letter to The Advertiser, the ABC said it had reviewed the materials the Star-Bulletin distributed and found "serious violations" of the bureau's publicity rules. These include:
• Assembling the April to June Sunday circulation analysis so that it looked "substantially similar" to a standard bureau report, even though it was not authorized by the bureau.
• Creating charts to represent The Advertiser's circulation and incorrectly saying the figures were based on audit reports.
• Distributing unauthorized, duplicated copies of ABC publisher's statements for the Star-Bulletin and The Advertiser.
• Making circulation claims that differ "significantly" from circulation figures shown in the Star-Bulletin's March 31, 2001, publisher's statement reviewed by the ABC.
ABC officials said they could not elaborate on the letter because of confidentiality agreements with all of the organization's members.
"When dealing with individual clients, we don't share those actions between clients," said Chris Hodges, the bureau's director of technical review and report processing. "It's confidentiality between the members and the ABC."
Mike Cusato, vice president of circulation for The Advertiser, said the newspaper complained to the ABC because "the material is erroneous and misleading."
Don Kendall, president of the Star-Bulletin and the weekly newspaper MidWeek, declined comment. He referred questions to Mark Lewis, the Star-Bulletin's vice president of circulation. Lewis did not respond to a request for comment.
Circulation figures are a key measure for companies tracking the effectiveness of their advertising dollars and are used by publications as a measure to set advertising rates.
Representatives of several Honolulu advertising agencies said this week that they had either seen or heard of the Star-Bulletin's recent circulation materials. None wanted to be quoted, saying they wished to maintain good relationships with both newspapers.
Earlier this month, The Advertiser reported daily circulation of 153,666 and Sunday circulation of 178,086 in the 15 weeks since the March 15 dissolution of its 39-year-old joint operating agreement with the Star-Bulletin. The Advertiser's figures were provided by an audit performed by the ABC.
