NY Times Says Circulation Holding Up to WSJ Assault

That's the headline in a Bloomberg story of June 4 based on an interview with New York Times CEO Janet Robinson.

"We are definitely not seeing any effect in regard to the circulation," Robinson is quoted. But if you read to paragraph 7 of the story, you learn that "The New York Times’s nationwide circulation fell 8.5% to 951,063 in the six months through March, while circulation at the Journal, which includes paying Internet readers, rose less than 1% to 2.09 million, data from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show."

How can such a juxtaposition earn the headline "NY Times Says Circulation Holding Up to WSJ Assault" instead of something like "NY Times Official Puts Desperate Spin on Plummeting Circulation Figures"? (Which would itself be a pretty soft way of calling her a liar.)

It's part of a pattern which could make left- and right-wing talking heads on Fox News look objective. Take a similar article from April 26, which includes this:

Diane McNulty, a Times spokeswoman, attributed the lost print readership to a focus on “quality circulation and high retention rates,” saying the newspaper has kept most readers who have subscribed for two years or more. In an e-mail to employees today, New York Times Co. Chief Executive Officer Janet Robinson and Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said that “readers and advertisers are very loyal.”

The Journal “will soon discover the intensity of that dedication,” they wrote.

So they haven't this year lost more than 50% of "readers who have subscribed for two years or more"? Is there anyone who would guess that things could be worse than that?

The Times and sister-paper Boston Globe, like many other newspapers, are going down the tubes; demonstrating that they are run by fantasists certainly can't help matters, even if they have Bloomberg headline writers and the Obama Administration eager to bail them out.