Are we measuring how many read over or rode over the newspaper?

Sometimes the react is better than the first act.

Mathew Ingram and Steve Yelvington have good posts on British newspaper consultant John Duncan Webster's Dictionary of Audience Exaggeration: How internet metrics promote the myth of the dying newspaper.

Yelvington has several nuggets, but this one I can't pass up quoting:

However, the notion that a newspaper's daily print sales figures should be multiplied by some factor to derive actual readers is wishful-thinking crap, and especially so in markets where the newspaper is home delivered, such as is typical in the United States. Try dividing! Once again, I ran over this morning's paper with my car on my way to work.

Tags: print readership | newspapers | internet metrics