2 Papers Correct Reader Totals

In the first five months of this year, advertising lineage at all Tribune papers was up 5 percent, with a high of 11 percent at the Chicago Tribune. But at the Los Angeles Times, ad revenue for the period was down 1 percent, for which the company blamed a fall-off in movie ads. Also, Tribune said earlier this month that it had overestimated ad revenue for the coming months and will take a write-down of as much as $15 million in second-quarter for the buyouts.

But that may sidestep the real issue, Morton said. "I think [Tribune] is using the softness in advertising as an excuse, but I think it's part of an ongoing strategy to get Times-Mirror papers up to Tribune profitability standards," he said.

Los Angeles Times Editor John Carroll declined to comment.

The Tribune cuts are being felt in Baltimore, where "voluntary severance" deals are being offered, as the Sun hopes to trim 18 union jobs and some nonunion ones. The paper said it would shrink its news hole -- the amount of space given each day to articles and photographs as opposed to advertising -- by as much as 10 percent, editors told the staff.

The news-hole downsizing may be part of a larger industry trend, another analyst said.

In the first four months of 2004, with advertising lineage up across the industry and with circulation essentially flat, consumption of newsprint was down 2 percent compared with last year, said Ross Hay-Roe, an analyst with Equity Research Association in Canada, where most U.S. newsprint is manufactured.

"If you look at demand, consumption keeps going south and we're struggling to explain why that is," Hay-Roe said. "It sure seems somewhere there is a shrinking news hole." He said he knew of one newspaper publisher, which he would not name, for which that is the case. The Washington Post did not decrease its news hole this year, the company said.

In Chicago, the circulation flap at the Sun-Times is complicating the drama around parent company Hollinger International and its deposed chief executive, Conrad Black. Hollinger said it discovered the circulation overstatement after Black stepped down in November but would not say how much the Sun-Times' reported daily circulation of 486,936 was pumped up. Hollinger stock fell nearly 10 percent Tuesday on the news.

Hollinger is suing Black to recover $380 million of newspaper revenue that the company alleges Black, his wife and three associates pocketed. Black's downfall has caused instability at the company, which may be seeking to sell the Sun-Times and perhaps some of its other papers, such as the Jerusalem Post.

But the Sun-Times' faked circulation figures likely will complicate that, Morton said.

"Theoretically, the Sun-Times is on the market," he said. "This is the last thing you want to happen when you're trying to sell the damn thing."