The latest ABC numbers are out, and the Bulletin’s numbers grew 34%, which is an astonishing number, considering newspaper circulation is down or flat pretty much every where else. So how’d they do it? By counting their e-edition subscribers, something that ABC is allowing them to do. So basically, they’re counting the same person twice in many cases.
I know a bunch of people over at the Bulletin, some I’d consider friends. and if this news helps folks there keep their jobs and brings in more money so they don’t have to be forced to take days off every month, than all the better. But I’d fully expect The Source to rip into this the first chance they get.
Comments
It’s still 31,000+ print subscribers, which in a city of 80K is pretty impressive. Is there another advertising medium that reaches that many people with one ad? I’ve been out of Bend too long to know….
In that E&P article, Keith Foutz of Western Communications, the Bulletin’s parent company, makes it sound like the e-edition is a separate product that print subscribers voluntarily sign up for, saying, “In 2008, we adapted a rate strategy of charging our print subscribers an additional 50 cents more per month if they wanted access to our E-edition.”
But that’s pretty clearly not the case. When you sign up for the bulletin’s full-week print subscription you automatically get the e-edition – you don’t have a choice. There is no way to opt out of this in the online subscription form. And the only mention on their site I could find of a way to turn e-edition access off is on the FAQ page, where they say:
… but there’s no mention of a $.50 reduction in your bill.
Given the above, I question how appropriate it is for them to be including these in their circulation numbers. It really does seem like they’re just counting a good fraction of their subscribers twice.
The E&P article appears to have been taken down. Anyway, I can no longer find it.
Hey H Bruce. Business Insider .com has an article that mentions the increase. I forgot that E&P archives their articles behind a paywall after a certain amount of days.