Audience-FAX, the new measurement tool that combines readership, circulation and online audiences calls attention to the “full reach” of newspapers, and isn't meant to cover up bad news about circulation, leaders of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and the Newspaper Association of America said Monday.

“Part of the reason it was created is, we think we haven't done the job we should in marketing this industry,” said Stephen Hills, president and general manager of the Washington Post, according to Editor & Publisher. “More people will read the Washington Post (and other papers) this Sunday than will watch the Super Bowl. The focus has been on the decline, as opposed to what is our overall reach.”

Audience-FAX also shows that newspapers are “increasingly successful in building Web audience, but, and this should be no surprise to anyone, (their) circulation has been steadily declining,” said Bob Cohen, president and CEO of Scarborough Research, according to E&P. Scarborough partnered with ABC and NAA to develop the metric.

The Web is bringing in a younger audience to newspapers, while research shows that newspapers are, over time, replacing lost circulation with Web audience, he said.

About 206 U.S. dailies are being audited by the voluntary Audience-FAX programme, or about 29 percent of dailies who report circulation in ABC's FAS-FAX semi-annual statements. Of the 25 largest dailies in the United States, 22 are participating, meaning USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are not in the programme.

NAA President and CEO John Sturm called Audience-FAX a “broad and inclusive initiative of measurement data that offers the full reach of newspapers.”

However, E&P stated that because this is a first-time measurement “it is impossible to say whether it shows that (a) newspaper's audience is growing, or – as circulation numbers have suggested for the better part of a decade – the industry is in an ongoing decline.”

Dave Walker, CEO of Newspaper Services of America said that while circulation is “absolutely not” becoming less relevant, advertisers are “extremely excited” to have a “single access place where we have a quantitative and qualitative measurements for the newspaper, E&P reported.

Audience-FAX puts newspapers in one of two categories. The first is for dailies in 81 syndicated Scarborough-measured markets that meet ABC's Reader Profile standards, while the rest are in the second category, according to E&P.

Audience-FAX data will be available for free here.