Stop the presses

Jan. 11 update:
Nah, run 'em!

This post has been superseded.


...or at least put them on Pause, and occupy your mind with higher things.

We've been informed of three issues regarding the "counting writers and readers" post from Monday:

1) We're told that the "duplicated readers" apparently only exist in the online paper, not the paper paper. This new information appears to be correct although we need to investigate more carefully.

2) The post can be interpreted as suggesting that there were shady dealings in counting writers - that the "919" gives the impression of invalidating the "over 3000" - which wasn't our intent at all, but we now see that it could be read that way. We have absolutely no reason to believe that the "over 3000" is anything but solid (i.e. we consider it solid)

3) We're told that the algorithm for calculating the 240k "potential buyers" was not "40k readers x 6 days per week", but instead involved including ads that were delivered outside The Union's coverage area. In any case the take-home message is this: The "potential buyers" details we printed are disputed by others who know more than we do.
So, please to take the post with several pounds of salt until further investigation is completed.

Thanks to the gentlemen who brought these issues to our attention.

Disclosure: the pronoun that we are using is the "royal we".