MY EARLIER POST ON USA TODAY’S DECLINING CIRCULATION produced this email from Harry Shearer:

You post: “Many of the newspaper’s sales come in hotels and airports.”

Every time I get USA Today in a hotel, it’s free. Some sale.

Yes, this is something addressed at InstaPundit many years ago, to the discomfiture of the USA Today circulation folks. Personally, I think that newspaper circulation figures probably have Enron-style accounting behind them, but what’s sad is that even that isn’t enough to keep the numbers up. As I said then I don’t have anything against USA Today, which is actually quite a good paper, but still, free copies aren’t the same as sales, and calling it a “sale” when the hotel buys the paper and buries the charge in the guest’s bill seems a stretch.