At the Minnehaha County Commission Meeting on Tuesday (FF:9:40), Carol Muller presented this chart when talking about choosing the county’s legal notice newspapers. She seemed to have confused ‘circulation’ with ‘readership’. But throughout the discussion, a couple of commissioners and even an Argus reporter got confused about circulation and readership. Eventually, the reporter, Mr. Walker did clarify that the circulation was different and made an estimate (that was close). According to the SD Newspaper Association website, the AL’s circulation is 26,137 daily and 36,000 on Sundays. Circulation means ‘printed and delivered’ papers. Readership is in reference to basically an assumption that more then one person reads a single printed paper. In other words, the number isn’t based on crap and is made up.
It’s unfortunate that Carol presented the wrong description to the commissioners. Hopefully Walker was abled to clear it up. Either way, a circulation of between 26-36,000 is pretty bad considering a metro area of over 250,000 residents.