Newspaper circulation will no longer be audited – but the publishers will tell the truth, right?

The Audited Media Association of Australia announced last week that it will stop its print audit services, meaning that no independent body will be counting the amount of newspapers that publishers print. Dr Mumbo diagnoses that everything will be perfectly fine, and this isn’t a harbinger of anything at all.

For those not in the wild world of print auditing, the AMAA were responsible for conducting audits of print media under two streams – the Audit Bureau of Circulations, that counted major print copies for sale in stores, and CAB auditing, the Circulation Audits Bureau, who counted papers and magazines distributed for free. None of that stuff will be done anymore.

With this huge gap in the media landscape, Dr Mumbo can happily reveal that the major and minor print publishers in Australia, all of whom are fighting for a decreasing pool of advertising money, have promised to tell the truth and the absolute truth about how many issues they print, and how widely distributed these issues are.