Dumping grounds


Brooklyn

Clinton St. in Cobble Hill
Carlton Ave. in Fort Greene
Kensington section
Carroll Gardens

Queens

South Ozone Park:
150-40 125th St.
128-15 152nd Ave.
121st St. near 135th.
156-29 125th St.
125th St. near 150th Ave.
121st. St.
126th St.
150-11 128th St.
150-03 128th St.
128th St. and Old South Rd.

Fresh Meadows:
159th St. near 59th Ave.
Utopia Pkwy. near 26th Ave.
Utopia Pkwy. near Crocheron
59th Ave. near 160th St.

Glendale:
Queens-Brooklyn Border

Staten Island

Westwood Ave. between Sheridan and Warwick

Post delivers circ mess
Thousands of dumped papers unread in city
By RICHARD T. PIENCIAK
DAILY NEWS SENIOR CORRESPONDENT
March 29, 2005
 http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/294294p-251973c.html

Discarded copies of the Post sit atop pile of snow at Rugby and Cortelyou roads in Brooklyn.

Complimentary copies of the New York Post litter the lawns on many homes in South Ozone Park, Queens, including 128-15 152nd St., owned by Luciehowtie.

The New York Post - what they don't give away, they throw away. To make matters worse, they plan to count all the trash as "paid circulation."

In a frantic, desperate effort to jimmy up circulation numbers, the Post has been littering New York City with free copies encased in red plastic bags - 50,000 copies each weekday.

Home delivery agents have been dumping papers on front lawns and porch stoops throughout Brooklyn and Queens Monday through Friday for the past month.

None of the recipients asked for the papers. None of the recipients is paying for them.

The red baggies also have been spotted in vacant lots, amid construction debris on properties with demolished homes and in front of houses clearly still under construction.

Incredibly, the Post says it intends to count the freebies as "paid circulation" - as many as 1.5 million copies over a six-week period.

Such a scheme is sometimes permitted under weak, arcane industry rules regarding "third-party sales," but only if the practice is not abused.

In the Post's case, much of what spokeswoman Suzi Halpin said would be counted as "paid circulation" under the third-party sales program is ending up in gutters, garbage cans and alleyways - unread, never removed from the delivery bags.

Most of the Post's dump-and-pump is taking place in the final month of the current six-month circulation reporting cycle, which concludes Thursday. The final tally will not become official for months.

If the paper that promised us Richard Gephardt as John Kerry's runningmate gets to count an extra 50,000 papers each weekday for the month of March, it would boost its overall average weekday circulation for the current six-month reporting period by 7,700 copies a day.

Halpin characterized the 50,000-copy figure as the "daily distribution" under the program but said the "audit number" would be "11,000 per day."

The Audit Bureau of Circulations, the industry watchdog, said its operating procedures prevent it from responding to questions about the Post program.

"The (Post) audit is still in process, (so) any answer on our part, as an objective auditor, would be purely speculative," said Heidi Chen, ABC's manager of communications.

Chen added that if a complaint is filed regarding the Post program, "ABC would take the matter very seriously and investigate the claims as part of the audit process."

Halpin said the "bulk program" was "approved by the ABC in advance, in writing."

Many of the targeted neighborhoods appear to be covered in bloody shrapnel from publisher Lachlan Murdoch's carpet-bombing propaganda machine.

In Brooklyn, bagged and abandoned Posts lay on brownstone stoops along Clinton St. in Cobble Hill, on steps along Carlton Ave. in Fort Greene and in front of apartment buildings in the Kensington section, off Ocean Parkway, and in front of building facades in Carroll Gardens.

One angry recipient in South Ozone Park told the Daily News that the Post throwaways have been "piling up on lawns" throughout his Queens neighborhood.

"There are papers all over the place. Vacant houses, houses under construction," the man said. "Nobody's picking them up. Nobody wants to be bothered."

Eight baggie-encased papers lay on the sidewalk and steps of an empty four-family house that is still under construction.

A half dozen papers rest below a "For Rent" sign on a home on 126th St. in Queens.

On Utopia Parkway near 26th Ave., red-bagged copies of the Post have been tossed over a construction fence that rings a home not ready for occupancy.

In Fresh Meadows, unopened bags filled with unread Posts clutter an alleyway on 59th Ave., near 160th St. At one nearby property, a red bag sticks out from construction debris on an abandoned lot on 159th St.

If the Post has its way, all these papers will be counted as part of its overall paid circulation.

But that's not even the full extent of the Post program.

Large, unopened bundles of the paper have been discovered discarded curbside at numerous locations in Brooklyn, including the corners of E. 37 St. and Avenue L and Rugby Road and Cortelyou Road. The News also discovered bundles of a recent Sunday Post abandoned in the middle of a Staten Island street.

All of the freebie papers dumped in Queens and Brooklyn - bundled and in individual red baggies - had a slightly altered front page, announcing the "sponsor" of the distribution program.

In the upper-right-hand corner of each paper, in the space that usually bears the cheap "25 cents" price tag, the Post inserted the message: "Your free sample copy compliments of champtickets.com."

Chad Champagne, who owns the Internet ticket brokerage firm, told The News in an interview outside his modest Lacey, Wash., home that he was paying the Post 6.25 cents per copy, only one-fourth of the tabloid's paltry 25-cent cover price - the required minimum for third-party sales copies.

Champagne told The News that he'd agreed to pay the Post between $90,000 and $95,000 for a six-week program. The champtickets scheme began its fourth week yesterday.

If allowed, the final two weeks of the current deal, plus six additional weeks if Champagne renews, could be claimed as "paid circulation" in the upcoming April-to-September period. Those papers could pump Post circulation totals for those months by another 2 million copies.

Newspapers base advertising rates on circulation.

Under the theory that a strong offense is the best defense, the Post - owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. - has been criticizing other newspapers' use of third-party sales like the champtickets arrangement as part of paid circulation.

Misuse of third-party sales in the calculation of circulation numbers was a key component of the scandal at Newsday, a frequent subject of Post barbs.

But all the while, the Post, which Lachlan Murdoch has admitted is losing $40 million a year, has been trying to pump up its numbers by using the same methods it has been steadily criticizing.

The subject of third-party sales is a major focus of an ongoing federal investigation into newspaper circulation practices. Business records of the Post, News, Newsday and The New York Times have all been subpoenaed.


Dumping grounds


Brooklyn

Clinton St. in Cobble Hill
Carlton Ave. in Fort Greene
Kensington section
Carroll Gardens

Queens

South Ozone Park:
150-40 125th St.
128-15 152nd Ave.
121st St. near 135th.
156-29 125th St.
125th St. near 150th Ave.
121st. St.
126th St.
150-11 128th St.
150-03 128th St.
128th St. and Old South Rd.

Fresh Meadows:
159th St. near 59th Ave.
Utopia Pkwy. near 26th Ave.
Utopia Pkwy. near Crocheron
59th Ave. near 160th St.

Glendale:
Queens-Brooklyn Border

Staten Island

Westwood Ave. between Sheridan and Warwick


Attention Daily News readers:


If your front steps or lawn is being littered with New York Posts that you didn't ask for and aren't going to pay for, please let us know and we'll try to help.

Email us at  opinion@nydailynews.com or call 212-210-news (6397) and leave a detailed message, with name, address and telephone number. Be sure to tell us how long the dumping has been going on and how many papers are being dumped on your property.

Originally published on March 29, 2005

 http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/294294p-251973c.html

homepage:: http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/294294p-251973c.html

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