OCTOBER 29TH, 1859when a newcomer arrives on the streets. Proving that some things never change, The Irish Timesfound itself on the receiving end of denigratory reports about its circulation shortly after its founding in 1859, as this early editorial indicates.
Nothing, it is said, is so fallacious as figures. A column of numerals is insidiously ranged upon a page, and an interpretation is added which you are required to believe is true.
A very dear newspaper may have a creditable country circulation. They who pay a high price for the paper alone may very well afford the addition of a penny for the stamp. The case is different with a low-priced paper.
Here the addition of the stamp exactly doubles the cost to the purchaser; nor is there such an urgent necessity for this loss. Our railroads branch out into so many different localities, and agencies are so readily procured for the provincial towns, that it is not necessary to affix the stamp, except for localities far remote from civilisation . . . It is a fallacy, and a well-known fallacy, to estimate the circulation of any paper merely by the Stamp Duty . . . Again, we put this case to the public.
A newspaper, suppose, has long been without a rival, and suddenly one starts up and considerably diminishes its circulation. It is easy, very easy for any proprietor who has cash or credit to make it appear that his circulation has not diminished, but increased.
The Stamp Office Returns are published but once a year. It is, then, no very clever artifice to purchase a large number of stamps for the last quarter. Two hundred pounds will purchase 60,000 stamps, and it is well worth the while of a proprietor who wishes to sell or to maintain the reputation of his paper to expend this sum on an article which will be used up in the regular course of publication . . .
We enjoy, we assert, a circulation of 8,000 copies daily. How does this journal appear in the advertising columns of a contemporary? It would seem as if we circulated just 160 stamped copies a day! We are sorry to add that there is a jesuitical ingenuity in the manipulation which calls for reprobation. We are represented in the Returns, as published by our contemporary, as a daily journal. Such was not the case. We commenced our publication, as a three-day paper, on March 31st and we did not commence as a daily morning paper until the July 21st – just four weeks after the last date of the Stamp Office Returns! We put it to anyone, is it fair or honest, in the first place, to estimate our circulation . . . by the number of stamped copies? . . .
The trading classes of Dublin will judge what is the best medium for their advertisements, not by delusive Returns, falsified in the description given of rivals, but by what they see before them.
They must see our journal everywhere. They must see it, for it is everywhere . . . The citizens of Dublin are able to estimate what journal best expresses their views on sanitary reform, on municipal government, on imprisonment for debt, and the inquisitorial registration, not only of public, but of private, character.
They know what journal has spoken out with the most boldness on social or national wrongs, irrespective of clique. They know, and do appreciate this fact, that the leading articles of this paper have not yet been converted into a panegyric upon any single trader, however estimable he may be; nor have our readers, expecting to read opinions upon the stirring topics of the day, been deluded with an eulogium upon the establishment of a frequent advertiser.
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