Miles Groves has an interesting column up at INMA (reg req.) in which he discusses the debate on circulation versus readership as the barometer of newspaper value. He argues that while readership is fine for selling advertisers, circulation is the Gold Standard for valuation.
We think both miss the boat. That’s why we’re going to try to sell advertising on an entirely different metric. And we’d much rather have 100,000 subscribers that read every day and post comment/content weekly than 1 million who don’t really engage.
But that’s just us. Some people think we’re crazy.