Banjo Jones notes that the Chronicle has made a New York Times top ten list:
In the shady business of newspaper circulation figures, the Houston Chronicle ranks 5th in the USA for the percentage of papers that are sold to “third parties” and given away.
The New York Times reports Monday that 8.2 percent of the Chron’s 740,005 paid circulation is comprised of third party sales.
[snip]
Kudos to the Chron, which managed to miss being named in the body of the NYT story (whew!) but was listed at #5 in an accompanying graphic that lists the newspapers that take advantage of the new third-party sales rule.
We say kudos because when new management took over at the Chron nearly three years ago, a vow was made to craft Houston’s only daily newspaper into one of the nation’s leading periodicals, and ranking #5 in a NYT list is something to hang your hat on. As the saying goes, as long as the media spells your name right, any publicity is good publicity.
Here’s the link to the graph that shows the Chronicle ranked #5.
Some of us have been suspicious of the Chronicle‘s circulation numbers for a while and there are many stories around Houston of people cancelling their subscriptions and still getting a paper tossed in their yard every morning. So, the Chronicle‘s publisher can spin like a top, but we know the Chronicle‘s numbers most likely aren’t what the higher-ups say they are.
