Chicago Sun-Times plays shell game with its circulation numbers

The Chicago Sun-Times, which dissects spoon-fed stories about Chicago and Cook County budgets is playing a shell game with its circulation numbers.

The newspaper claims it has a circulation of 419,000 newspaper on an average day. But, like most stories in the anorexic newspaper, the numbers are fabrications and lies. The 419,000 figure is actually a combination of the Sun-Times and all of its community newspapers that it has purchased to gut and then pillage for advertising revenues.

Faced with bankruptcy, the newspapers has been promoting itself as the 10th largest newspaper in the Midwest, based on circulation and 14th largest in Sunday circulation using the skewered system hoping to fool advertisers. Sunday is traditionally a newspaper's largest circulation day.

But the lie is obvious to anyone who looks.

The real Sun-Times circulation is a meager 251,000 papers for 2011.

That's compared to 486,900 in 2004 (when it previously inflated its numbers to fool advertisers. Read that story?) And that's pathetic.

How does it double it's phony numbers? By adding the circulations of its community newspapers: In addition to the Chicago Sun-Times, the figures include six daily suburban papers — Beacon-News (Aurora), Courier-News (Elgin), Herald-News (Joliet), Lake County News-Sun, Post-Tribune (Merrillville, Ind.) and the SouthtownStar — the three-times weekly Naperville Sun and 32 weekly newspapers published by the Pioneer Press.

One strong boycott would put the newspaper (and its readers) out of their misery.

The lying liars at the Chicago Sun-Times do it again.