Under a program, an educational consulting firm had bought 12,000 copies of the paper for 1 euro cent each. Payments were then made to the firm by The Journal through third parties.
The arrangement came to light after the publisher of the European Journal at the time, Andrew Langhoff, resigned last October over what The Journal described as questions of journalistic ethics related to the deal.
The Audit Bureau of Circulations in Britain looked into the matter but said it found no problems. “The payment arrangements underlying this contract were complex and at times circuitous, but A.B.C. has found no clear evidence that these copies should be regarded as not compliant with the reporting standards for international publications,” the audit bureau said.
The audit bureau said, however, that it had begun a separate review of its standards for certain multicopy circulation deals involving international publications “to ensure they fully reflect industry requirements and provide the requisite clarity for all concerned.”
The Journal, which is owned by News Corporation, said it had been “transparent throughout,” noting that the audit bureau signed off on the circulation deal at the time. While denying that the deal was used to artificially inflate sales figures for the European edition of The Journal, the paper discontinued the arrangement last year.
“We have already acknowledged publicly that while the copies were properly counted under A.B.C. rules, the program itself was unnecessarily complex and not one we will replicate in the future,” The Journal said in a statement on Wednesday.
“We appreciate the A.B.C. U.K. putting aside the misleading and sensationalistic press coverage from some media outlets and conducting a thorough and dispassionate review,” the paper added.
The European Journal reported a circulation of a bit less than 75,000 for the first half of last year. Of that total, more than 53,000 represented discounted bulk sales or free copies, which advertisers sometimes consider less valuable than those bought by paying customers.
The audit bureau said its new investigation involved sales deals like The Journal’s former arrangement with the educational consulting firm, in which business customers contract to receive multiple copies to distribute to their employees or other recipients. Other kinds of bulk sales deals, in which newspapers are sold to airlines or hotels, for example, for free distribution to customers, are not under scrutiny, a spokeswoman for the bureau, Isabel Napier-Wilson, said.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=db64f92245e87485e213463ced13fc52
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