2 Papers Correct Reader Totals

"It's a form of theft," said the analyst, John Morton. "Your ad rates are keyed to your circulation. You can sue to get refunds." Newspapers report their circulation to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which has been reviewing the Newsday and Hoy figures.

Not all newspaper companies are having a rough year. Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper chain, reported that both ad revenue and volume increased last month compared with May 2003. Knight Ridder Inc. reported a 2 percent advertising gain over last year through May at its 31 newspapers.

At the Wall Street Journal, however, management and workers have been trying to reach a new contract for months, and union reporters say their "byline strike" is meant to show their unhappiness with the company's offers. About 1,600 newsroom and business-side employees voted down a three-year contract proposal made by Dow Jones in January, saying the offer increased health care costs and fell short on wage increases. The staff has since engaged in walkouts and protests and requested a mediator because the company threatened to end negotiations and impose a contract, which it can do, said Tom Lauricella, a Journal reporter who covers mutual funds and is the newsroom union representative.

Among major dailies, the Journal was hit hardest by the ad recession and is the last to crawl out. It greatly expanded its staff to cover the tech boom of the late '90s. The tough dealing in the labor negotiations likely reflects management's reserve about the coming ad market.

During Dow Jones's first-quarter earnings report in April, Chief Operating Officer Richard F. Zannino said the Journal's ad growth "provides the strongest evidence yet that the worst of the three-year [business-to-business] advertising depression may be behind us with an emerging recovery at hand. Having said this, monthly lineage comparisons at the Journal remain volatile and overall advertising levels remain well below normal."

Union employees say they understand that.

"When this all started, we recognized that things were not great" with Dow Jones, Lauricella said. "But we also recognized that things would be getting better, as they are. The company is not in that kind of dire straits where they need our subsidies to survive."

Unlike union members at The Washington Post, who staged two byline strikes in 2002, Journal employees do not have the right to remove their bylines; instead, the Journal complied with the writers' request to do so. Writers at Barron's, also owned by Dow Jones, have requested their bylines removed from Saturday's edition.

At Tribune Co., the troubles are due in part to a marriage of corporate cultures. Tribune bought the Times-Mirror chain, which included the Los Angeles Times and Baltimore Sun, in 2000. In the year before the merger, Tribune's profit margin for its newspaper division was 29.2 percent, according to company reports. For Times-Mirror papers, the number was 18.2 percent.

In the year after the acquisition, the combined newspapers delivered a 19.7 percent profit margin, as the Tribune papers absorbed the lower margins of their new Times-Mirror brethren. But recent moves suggest Tribune's tolerance is over.