If You Ask Me, I Blame the Telemarketers

The L.A. Times' circulation plummets 5.5%:

Though executives declined to break out individual paper's Fas-Fax numbers, which are due out in May, Smith acknowledged the Times will drop slightly more than 5.5%.

Smith said that for the entire group, home-delivered copies are down about 4% while the drop in single-copy sales is even greater.

Q1 circulation revenue for the company was down 9% due to "volume discounts." The largest revenue drops occurred at the Los Angeles Times and Newsday. Excluding the two papers, circulation revenue for the company would have been down 4%.

This piece of information didn't keep analysts from circling around the L.A. Times. When asked why the paper is experiencing such steep circ losses compared to the competition's -- the Los Angeles Daily News, for example, was flat last period -- Smith explained the Times relied too heavily on telemarketing. That, along with the implementation of tighter controls on field sales, contributed to the drop-off.

Which is another way of saying that with so many other big papers getting caught red-handed inflating circulation numbers to rip off advertisers, we had to start telling the truth.

Of course, I have another potential cause of the circulation decline to throw in---the Times' disastrous, sleazy, and completely political campaign to save Gray Davis' hindquarters by scandal-mongering against Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the paper's disastrous, sleazy, and completely political campaign to prop up John Kerry during the past presidential election.

I know of a lot of folks who gave the Times' telemarketers some pretty choice feedback over these two outrages when they called attempting to prop up circulation.

They blame their own telemarketers, I blame their naked bias. You decide which of these propositions is closer to the truth.