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Puffster
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Ed's fingers look like sausages today. And he is not amused.

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News
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1.Business Week Online
Forbes: Circulation Woes, But At Least They??™re Not Alone
By Staff
12/27/05
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/FineOnMedia/archives/2005/12/forbes_circulat.html

A report from Audit Bureau of Circulations, released just as the media world went into its annual Christmastime hibernation, found that Forbes incorrectly classified some circulation as paid and missed delivering the circulation it guarantees advertisers

The Audit Bureau audit, which was released on Dec. 22, found that just over 30,000 of Forbes' subscriptions could not be counted as paid circulation. That left Forbes' 2004 paid circulation at 894,886, or about 0.6% below its 900,000 rate base--the circulation a magazine promises to deliver. A revised audit for Forbes' 2003 circulation, also released on Dec. 22, showed an even greater shortfall: Over 60,000 were subscriptions disallowed and the magazine's circulation fell 6.7% short of rate base.

This news comes after years of back-and-forth between magazines and advertisers over subscription sources. (It's long been an open secret in the industry that shadowy agents could deliver massive volumes of subscribers, but the quality of those readers--do they want or did they even ask for that magazine?--was dubious.) These debates, coupled with some high-profile circulation scandals (more on them later) led the Audit Bureau to announce last summer it would no longer count subscriptions from certain agents as paid circulation.

MORE ONLINE

You'll notice a new name atop the masthead of our next issue, as Jim Louderback has been promoted to Editor-in-Chief of PC Magazine and Editorial Director of Ziff Davis's Consumer Technology Group, which includes PCMag.com, ExtremeTech, DigitalLifeTV, Gearlog, TechnoRide, and his popular What's New Now newsletter. Jim has been part of PC Magazine for a long time, as a regular columnist and as editorial director of our many Web sites over the past several years.

Before that, he held top editorial jobs at ZDTV/TechTV, served as editorial director of PC Week, editor-in-chief of Windows Sources, and the director of PC Week Labs. Jim brings an enormous amount of insight and enthusiasm to his new role, and I know he has plenty of exciting new ideas for the magazine going forward. You'll be seeing many of them in the coming months.

In my new position as Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, I'll oversee the content of all of our operations, including magazines, Web sites, and events. I'll continue to write this column, and you'll see me on our Web site and at various industry events. And with PC Magazine now published in 40 countries and 16 languages, I'll continue to work with our international partners. In recent months, I've traveled to China and Brazil, where we've just launched new editions of the magazine. I'm still amazed to see how computer and Internet technology are changing the way people work and live around the world.

MORE ONLINE

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Whisper Jobs
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Ed hears...

...Nothing at the moment. Seems not a creature is stirring until after New Year's. Bahh.

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