Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax has a history of playing games with the circulation numbers of its magazine; we've noted, for instance, that it once claimed it had a "paid circulation" of 250,000 when in fact it was only 59,000.
It does so again in a Feb. 14 article touting how "Newsmax.com has soared in Web traffic," in which it claims that Newsmax magazine has "a paid readership of 600,000." The problem is, "paid readership" is a meaningless metric; the only one that really matters is paid circulation, since readership is difficult to quantify.
In November 2005, Newsmax declared that the magazine's audited paid circulation was 102,695, then added: "NewsMax Magazine estimates this paid circulation gives it a monthly readership in excess of 400,000 persons each month – making it the largest read independent news monthly with a conservative perspective." In other words, Newsmax is claiming that an average of four people read each copy of the magazine.
Factoring that into Newsmax's new claim of "paid readership of 600,000," this apparently means the magazine's paid circulation is around 150,000.
