Talk:List of magazines by circulation

January 2012

Tucker Max is using this page as a method of discovering if you're good enough to be his assistant. Good luck. (unsigned)

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Pharma Focus Asia 123www.pharmafocusasia.com/magazine/archives/ --222.67.209.21 (talk) 02:16, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Maybe, the publisher is a stinger, who don't offer a sample issue ~__^--222.67.209.21 (talk) 02:28, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

BTW, if someone come across any fake magazines in the following, please let me know http://pharmcast.tradepub.com/ --222.67.213.171 (talk) 03:39, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

How current is the data?

I think the references NEED to say when the data was accessed. The reader has no way of know how old these constantly changing figures are. ike9898 (talk) 14:12, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

A look at the article history suggests that the US data was updated in Jan 2009. ike9898 (talk) 14:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

figures

The American magazine circulation numbers have been out for weeks - this article needs updating.91.107.104.32 (talk) 20:11, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Source of data for Asian magazines

Where is the source come from? I know some magazines in Hong Kong and Taiwan has a circulations of more than 100,000 but they are not listed here. --Quest for Truth (talk) 21:55, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Italics

Why is it that some of the magazines' titles aren't in italics?? Bobnorwal (talk) 17:07, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

They all should be per MOS:ITALIC.--Lexein (talk) 20:03, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Netherlands

The Netherlands section is all wrong, a lot of brochures, folders, door-to-door papers and free handout papers are included. Would someone correct this.(?) Nukemduke (talk) 14:47, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Removing the Circulation aspect

One of the key flaws in this particular post as I went to add a new one is it is difficult to "Verify" the distribution. The page is viable, yet grossly incomplete. With that said, in order to keep the page true, shall we remove the "Circulation" component which should therefore remove the "Verify" concern of an otherwise useful page? Dfortuna (talk) 16:40, 21 December 2013 (UTC).

Top magazine missing

I'm just curious if anyone knows how the definitions are tortured so as to exclude the most widely circulated magazine in the world and the most widely read magazine in the world from being included from this article? --Tom Hulse (talk) 23:46, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

how can it be top in the world, yet not appear on any of the regional lists? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.186.86.53 (talk • contribs) 15:05, 20 December 2014‎

Tom Hulse The problem is that the sources providing circulation numbers are published by organizations which help marketers buy advertising in the magazines. Magazines which do not sell advertising are not included in their lists. The Watchtower, an extremely popular religious magazine which is given away for free, is not included here because it does not sell advertising. I work for Consumer Reports, a United States magazine with 8 million paid subscribers and it also is not included here.

Besides these lists only providing information about magazines which sell advertising, another bias is that they make no distinction between digital versus paper circulation or between free versus subscription circulation. AARP, named as the most popular magazine, is provided for "free" to people in the United States who join a very popular club and who mostly want the benefits of organization membership, not the included magazine subscription. Likewise, a significant percentage of The Watchtower circulation is when someone gives the magazine away for free, and in my opinion, people receiving a free thing are a different kind of reader than someone who pays money to receive something.

There are email-only newsletters which have much higher subscriber numbers, and these are not included in this list at all. However, this is a bit unfair because some of these magazines are combining their email numbers with their paper numbers to get a high subscription count.

There are lots of ways that this page could be improved, but it is very difficult to find any one source which describes this issue. Tom Hulse, if you can propose a system for counting circulation, then I would discuss that with you. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:01, 20 December 2014 (UTC)

When I posted that question, I didn't realize it was during a tiny window of time when someone had deleted the whole "worldwide" section. I see now that the article has included them for quite awhile. I would strongly agree though, that there is a huge problem with our sources in general in this article. They seem to vary widely in their bias, but all are just plain incorrect if used to support general magazine circulation comparisons that would be useful to a Wikipedia article. In fact, it's not really bias; they're open about what they document. These sources are merely interested in a different measurement than what our editors wish to use them to support. And it's not just paid vs unpaid either. Many of the regional sources are merely documenting the magazines that they work with, which is sometimes most of the big ones. It's deceiving in that it almost looks like a complete list of overall circulation for a given area, as our Wikipedia editors are using it for. I doubt there even exist the comprehensive types of sources and measurements of the magazine industry that we need to make a balanced article, even on a regional basis. --Tom Hulse (talk) 21:48, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

If you only make a list of advertising magazines, will you change your page-name please? It is no longer in accordance with the reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by GuiBackel (talk • contribs) 10:21, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

A lof of these concerns could be addressed if the article included a brief explanation of what circulation means and how it is measured. Publishers (or someone) must pay a fee to have their titles' circulations audited by one of the various circulations audit boards. They must also provide detailed evidence to support all claims of circulation - sales, returns, promotional copies etc. If publishers such as the publisher of The Watchtower or others do not choose to be audited, that is fine, but these titles will never appear in any audited circulations listings. It is not just magazines that carry advertising that are audited - but for various reasons publishers might elect to participate in the audit process. It would also help if each table included details of the audit bureau responsible for the circulation figures - this would help readers to check up and verify accuracy. BronHiggs (talk) 01:35, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Magazine or Pamphlet

And what is the difference between a magazine and a pamphlet which the Watchtower seems more akin to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.50.233.4 (talk) 19:02, February 14, 2015

A pamphlet is usually regarding a single subject and is not a periodical. If you have a pamphlet that contains articles on multiple subjects and is published monthly or weekly, then it's called a magazine. P.S. Don't forget to sign your comments, thanks! --Tom Hulse (talk) 21:31, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Worldwide list

There are almost certainly more than two magazines by one publisher that are distributed worldwide. As such, the section does not currently seem to constitute a neutral point of view.--Jeffro77 (talk) 08:17, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Agree. The listing of two magazines by the same publisher seems an arbitrary decision and the section contains no source that states they are in fact the top two magazines in the world. I have deleted the list. BlackCab (TALK) 01:46, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Once again, someone recently added a 'global' section about Watchtower and Awake. The content was taken verbatim from a Watchtower Society (primary) source, which was clearly intended as promotional. This seems to reflect a broader problem with this article in regard to 'popularity' that may be falsely implied by 'circulation' (and that concern is not limited to the JW religions magazines). This issue was previously raised by User:Blueraspberry: "people receiving a free thing are a different kind of reader than someone who pays money to receive something". A free 16-page magazine that may be accepted out of politeness is not directly comparable to magazines typically stocked by newsagents.--Jeffro77 (talk) 03:58, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

At issue is that the article's title is Magazines by circulation. The term 'circulation' has a very precise meaning and it is not the same as distribution. Circulation refers to an audited count of the number of copies of a magazine or newspaper that are sold or delivered to consumers, businesses or households. In most countries, a circulations audit board is established to audit periodicals and verify their claims. These audit boards operate on a national basis. As far as I know there is no global circulations audit board and magazines such as the The Watchtower do not participate in any circulations audit. On the other hand, some other magazines such as Reader's Digest which are global titles, do participate in circulations audits, but only report the data on a country by country basis. The main reason for this is that such magazines carry different advertising in each country edition - and advertisers are primarily interested in estimating the likely reach for a given geographic market. Magazines that are distributed rather than circulated do not fit with the criteria implicit in the article title and have no place here. BronHiggs (talk) 01:43, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

What about using other RS's? For example this one that quotes the New York Review of Magazines (the link to the original article on that source is now dead however). I'm not saying that the WT should necessarily be included, but just that there are other sources that are not promotional that back up the idea of the WT being the most widely circulated magazine in the world, which is what the articles title is about. Not most popular, not even the most read, or "audited". Circulated. I.e. "to be distributed or sold, especially over a wide area." Vyselink (talk) 19:20, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

The previous commentary is confused. The quote from Business Insider refers to WT as the most widely read magazine in the world. Readership and circulation are different things. This is then used to back a claim that WT is the most widely circulated - but this term is being used in a lay sense rather than in its technical industry sense. For the record, readership refers to the number of people who have read or looked into a current issue of a newpaper or magazine. Circulation refers to the number of copies sold. Readership is always higher than circulation due to the pass along effect.

As I have previously said, in the media industry the term "circulation" is technical and it specifically refers to titles that are audited by an independent audit board whose status is accepted by newspaper industry members and advertisers. In the media industry, a different definition applies (see below). In many jurisdictions, this definition is codified and enshrined in law. The definition is important for several reasons:

(a) it affects who can advertise in a given publication. In some jurisdictions, free newspapers are legally excluded from the definition of newspapers in general circulation. See for instance, the legal definition of a newspaper in Pensylvannia (US) (http://panewsmedia.org/legal/legaltopics/definitionnewspaper) and Texas (https://tccj.tcu.edu/what-is-a-newspaper-of-general-circulation/. For example, in Pensylvannia law firms are only permitted to advertise in newspapers in general circulation and are prohibited from advertising in the so-called 'free newspapers'. Elsewhere government departments are prohibited from advertising in free newspapers.

(b) the classification of newspapers into national, metropolitan, regional or community newspapers is most often related to their size, as measured by paid circulation (see,for instance, Saving Community Journalism: The Path to Profitability by Penelope Muse Abernathy, p.2.

Some definitions of circulation

"Circulation is a count of how many copies of a particular publication are distributed. Circulation audits are provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC)." Newspaper Readership Survey (UK), http://www.nrs.co.uk/nrs-print/readership-and-circulation-trends/readership-vs-circulation/

"Circulation measures how many copies of a publication, on average, are actually circulating which are of value to an advertiser." (Audit Bureau of Circulation (NZ) http://www.abc.org.nz/about.html

[Average circulation] is the "The sum of total paid, total qualified nonpaid and total verified nonpaid circulation." Alliance for Audited Meedia (US) (https://auditedmedia.com/sites/default/files/content/downloads/US-Newspaper-Types-Definitions.pdf)

Newspapers that are included in circulations audits are generally permitted some free distribution but typically these are confined to a small percentage of total circulation (e.g. 2%) and the free copies must be educational or have some other approved purpose. Free newspapers do not normally participate in circulations audits.

Given that the legal definition varies across different countries and states, there is not at this time any association that undertakes independent global circulation measurement. Nor is this likely in the foreseeable future - particularly as circulation is in decline and readers are turning to online news sources. It just doesn't make any sense to talk about the 'widest circulation in the world' because this is not something that is currently measured by any authoritative or reputable accounting or auditing system.

Incidentally, readership is also measured by means of a survey and in each country this is carried out by a reputable market research company that has been vetted and selected by the peak newspaper industry association and is accepted as the industry standard. I note that the journalist who wrote the Business Insider article was forced to change the article title from "most widely read" to "most widely circulated." But it is surprising that a specialist media reporter made such a fundamental error about circulation. He should have known better. BronHiggs (talk) 22:55, 10 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't believe my previous comment was "confused", I was merely saying that there are secondary RS's that can establish at least a discussion to the claim that the WT is the most widely circulated magazine in the world. I was basically replying to @Jeffro77:'s comment, admittedly from several years ago, that the original source used was an internal JW (and thus primary) source. As to your claim that "this is not something that is currently measured by any authoritative or reputable accounting or auditing system," I would say that while you are correct, it is also irrelevant, unless this page was intentionally designed to only contain information from the auditing organizations/systems you refer to, which, if that is true (though I highly doubt it), should specifically be mentioned in the lead. Otherwise, Wikipedia runs on reliable sources, which do not need to be from an official authoritative governing body/system. I have provided what would typically be considered a RS. Whether it is enough or not I don't know, it may well not be, but the discussion might occur.

Also, now that I look at it, the "Asia", "Russia" and "New Zealand" sections have citation needed tags from 2015, 2013, and 2013 respectively, and are therefore unsourced completely, let alone several years out of date. Unless sources can be found for them, they should be removed. Vyselink (talk) 01:20, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

It is very clear from the title of the article that the content refers to magazines by circulation. On this basis, it is very clear that this means magazine titles that have their circulation audited by an independent body that is accepted by the media industry. The media definition of circulation is an entirely separate issue to Wikipedia's policies about source reliability. By definition, any industry standard organisation charged with responsibility for monitoring circulation and/or readership would have to be acceptable to Wikipedia.

As for the other matters you raise, you must make whatever editing decisions you see fit to make. As long as they are within policy parameters, I do not see any problem. In general, it is preferable to locate appropriate references for such content rather than engage in wholesale deletions or tagging. Just so that you know, I did not add any of the content to which you refer. I only started editing around this time last year. So please do not revert the content out of some desire to get back at me for opposing the inclusion of WT. I do not have any vested interest in the relevant content remaining or being deleted. I would hope that we are both interested in building an encyclopedia - and improving its accuracy, even if we disagree on one specific point. My own philosophy is that I only revert content when it is factually incorrect, directly contradicts other material in the same article or patently misinterprets the source used. For all other content, I try to work with it by finding sources, updating it, improving expression, shaping it so that the meaning is clearer, placing it into some type of context or generally enhancing it in some way. But, if you decide to revert, you would be in good company, as there are many reversionists out there. BronHiggs (talk) 03:19, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

The original concern of this thread is that at the time, the list provided a 'Worldwide' section that only included JW magazines, which constitutes undue weight, and is not a valid comparison with magazine distribution in any particular country. The original content asserted that circulation of The Watchtower is 42,000,000 in 236 'lands' (an ambiguous term used by Watch Tower that includes various dependencies and territories that are not countries). If the total distribution is divided proportionally relative to the number of members per country, the number distributed doesn't top the list for any of the countries in this list, though the figures are still generally significant; of course, this is only a guideline and isn't a suitable metric for inclusion in the list. Readership is not necessarily an accurate term, even where sourced, since no auditing has been done to determine copies that are actually read (or even 'placed'). And as has previously been indicated in this discussion, there is a considerable difference between magazines that are purchased and a 16-page brochure that is given away to anyone who shows a glimmer of interest.

It is certainly correct that specific 'magazine auditing systems' may not be the only suitable sources. However, JW primary sources are not ideal for their circulation figures, and the secondary sources only cite the JW-reported figures anyway.--Jeffro77 (talk) 08:33, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

There is something else funny happening here and I do not know how to address it. I work for Consumer Reports, a US-based magazine which does not sell advertisements. It is part of an international consortium of magazines which member organizations publish under an umbrella organization called Consumers International. In the 90s Consumer Reports had about 8 million subscribers to the paper magazine. These days the publication still has about 8 million subscribers paying about $40/year, but 3-4 million subscribe to the paper version and 3-4 million subscribe to the online version. Since the publication does not sell advertising, it does not make reports to any commercial trade organization for the purpose of assigning a value to its advertising space, and consequently its count for subscribers is not on the standard industry lists. This is probably true for all the magazines published by organizations in the Consumers International network, and probably true for other magazines which do not use advertising.

This Wikipedia article is based on reliable sources which have the bias of serving the purpose of helping publications match their audience to advertisers. I regret to say that I do not know how to access circulation numbers for publications which do not sell advertising, because for many organizations (including Consumer Reports) there are not regularly published records of these numbers except for sporadic incidental mentions.

Here are some challenges which I see in this page: comparing distribution counts for advertisers versus other sources; determining whether a one publication counts as several or whether several count as one if there are online and paper components; more clearly presenting that information for different publications comes from different sources and may use very different counting standards as compared to another source. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:24, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

The definition of circulation is not related to whether a publication carries advertising nor any attempt to measure the value of its advertising space. Any publication can participate in the circulation audit, but it must be able to provide evidence of its circulation figures by providing delivery dockets, sales and returns and other relevant documents. Arguments in the preceding thread claim that the Watchtower has a circulation of some 40 million copies. This figure is much-cited. The Business Insider article that was used to support such a claim specifically states that, "Every month, nearly 40 million copies of The Watchtower are printed in more than 180 languages and sent to 236 countries." Herein lies the heart of the problem. Printing a given number of copies of a publication is simply NOT the same as having those copies in general circulation. This is why the auditing bureaus take great care to define circulation and provide details about the auditing process and the measures used. The names of some of the audit bureaus in English speaking countries are given in the article's see also section and in the external links. Results are typically published on their websites immediately following each audit (usually 4 times annually). In addition, the results are provided to main media outlets and summaries of the results are regularly published in mainstream media, so that it is relatively easy to locate official circulation figures for most countries. Online subscriptions and online readership are both measured, but use different measures and methodologies - readership is generally measured using survey methods while online subscriptions can be measured using auditing processes. Many of the audit bureaus have introduced measures for online subscriptions - although this is arguably in a transition phase. Nielsen media is very active in the area of measuring online audiences. Some market research companies also measure cross-media readership as well. BronHiggs (talk) 22:36, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

I have done some cleanup of the Consumer Reports statement to remove redundancy and promotional tone. In particular, it is special pleading to assert that the inclusion of unaudited periodicals would 'put Consumer Reports in the top 10 in the list above', since there could be any number of other unaudited publications that might displace Consumer Reports from the top 10.--Jeffro77 (talk) 07:23, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Well, Consumer Reports is currently mentioned in the article. I, for one, will not be deleting it simply because it is not my practice to delete content that is factual and properly sourced. However, I envisage problems. Many countries have consumer advocacy magazines. For example Choice (Australia); Consumer Checkpoint (London, England); Consumer Digital (Spain); Customer Experience Magazine (UK); Gazette Verbrauchermagazin (Germany); Info Algerie (Algeria); Nosy Basset (South Africa) and Van An (Viet Nam). Why does the American title warrant special mention? Why not include all consumer advocacy mags now that there is a precedent for this? If consumer magazines are considered worthy of special inclusion, then why not include religious titles such as Watchtower and the many others? These are often worthy titles in that they publish stories about their philanthropic endeavours. I see the potential for this list to become a dumping ground for any unaudited title to be included in the commentary rather than in a table?

The claim that Consumer Reports is in the top ten simply cannot be substantiated by any published ranked list. The lists of top magazines published in the media are always based on those published by the circulations audit authorities. It is not appropriate to slip a different title into the published list, just because someone likes a given title or believes it is somehow more worthy. In addition, I do not think it is appropriate to compile composite ranked lists, based on multiple sources (where the titles are ranked differently based on different definitions and metrics). In effect, this editing decision opens the door to any editor to add whichever titles they like by ignoring the tables and adding them to the commentary below.

Finally, this article may need to be reconceptualised, because as Bluerasberry points out, the issue of online audiences is becoming a major consideration for print media. Total circulation figures are in long-term decline around the globe, as more people turn to digital for news and entertainment. However, digital audiences are measured in different ways than circulation, so it is not possible to add these two figures together.

My own view is that this article would be much more useful to users if each table included three columns, one for circulation, one for print-based readership and one for digital readership. But there are also problems with updating the information to consider. It already appears to be too difficult to update these tables every year and so some of the data is four years out of date. If additional reporting requirements were established for the article, it seems likely that the data would only be updated every decade or so. I also think that it is sufficient to report the top 20 titles in each country, and provide a link to the measurement data where users can locate data for additional titles that might be of interest. This would reduce the burden of reporting larger number of titles. However, linking to external measurement agencies is almost guaranteed to raise the ire of the WP External links project who dedicated to the eradication of all external links, whether listed in the external links section, or embedded in the article. BronHiggs (talk) 20:16, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

As indicated in my edit summary, I am not really happy with the presentation of Consumer Reports after the main list, and I would not object if it were removed altogether, largely for the same reasons you have indicated. Regarding your comment about Watchtower, it apparently is not directly comparable to Consumer Reports, as I'm not aware that country-based publication statistics are available, and the worldwide statistics cannot meaningfully be compared with the country-based lists. Also, in the last few years, it's figures include digital downloads, and they now refer to copies 'produced' rather than 'printed'.--Jeffro77 (talk) 08:09, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

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List of Magazines does not include Rifleman Magazine ?

List of Magazines does not include Rifleman Magazine ?