Dear Time-Reader

In the newspaper-and magazine-publishing businesses, our bureau of standards is an organization called the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Every important publication in the U.S. that carries advertising and has a paid circulation is a member of the A.B.C. As its name indicates, the bureau is the authority on correct circulation figures. This month the A.B.C. is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

Before the bureau was organized, true figures on a publication's circulation were seldom available. Probably the first attempt to get an impartial audit of a publication's circulation was back in 1847, when the New York Tribune challenged the New York Herald as to which had the larger circulation. The rival publishers finally selected two impartial judges to settle the controversy, and the judges went to work on their audit. Their method: a careful count of the amount of newsprint used by each paper over a four-week period. When the count was completed, circulation title went to the Herald, on the ground that it had used 1,075 1/2 reams v. the Tribune's 720 3/4 reams of newsprint.

This kind of test would satisfy nobody today--least of all the advertiser, who has a right to know accurately how much circulation he is receiving for his investment in advertising.

In the undisciplined days of rough-and-tumble publishing, many publishers were reluctant to open their books for audit. A further difficulty lay in the fact that there was no standard bookkeeping and auditing method in the publishing business. Groups of advertisers and their agents organized and continued to push for accurate circulation figures and a uniform method of presenting them.

Gradually, publishers realized that the practice of audited circulation would be as beneficial to them as to advertisers, and in 1914 the Audit Bureau of Circulations was launched to verify circulation claims on a basis of uniform standards. Membership was voluntary and consisted of publishers, advertisers and their agencies. The first year there were 612 members. This month, 40 years later, the roster of A.B.C. members is 3,554 (673 advertisers, 192 agencies and 2,689 publishers).

In making their audits, the A.B.C. auditors, who are highly trained certified public accountants, are given full access to a publication's circulation records. Then they verify these records by independent research. Records of both newsstand and subscription sales are studied and checked. Newsdealers' sales are tabulated, and deductions made for unsold copies. Subscription lists are checked and methods of selling subscriptions are noted.

When the audit is finished, the publication's total circulation is then posted in a detailed annual A.B.C. report, which not only shows the quantity of the circulation and its distribution, but also the methods used to get that circulation.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations has, in fact, become an indispensable factor in modern newspaper and magazine publishing. The late Senator and Publisher Arthur Capper of Kansas once described the A.B.C. this way: ". . . The only institution in America in which the producer and the consumer, the manufacturer and the customer, the seller and the buyer have voluntarily sat down together and have cooperated, harmoniously and with good feeling, in establishing standards of practice."

That description still stands as a good appraisal of the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Cordially yours,

James A. Linen

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