The board agreed last week to make the following recommendations, according to E&P:

• Implement a flexible pricing model where newspapers will be considered paid by ABC regardless of the price for which the copy was sold.

• Other-paid circulation will become "verified circulation" similar to how ABC accounts for magazines, meaning there will no longer have to be payment for third-party copies or Newspapers in Education for the circulation to count.

• Hotel and employee copies, currently under other-paid, will be reclassified under a new paid-circulation category.

• Newspapers will have flexibility to convert home subscribers to a greater frequency.

Details on the new strategies will take about three years to work out, and will end up changing the face of FAS-FAX, audit reports and publisher's statements. In the future, publisher's statements and audit reports will give a summary on the total average paid and verified circulation and distribution by how it is sold, such as home delivery and newsstand, according to E&P.

“Our (aim) was to streamline the audit process, clearly define important measurement standards, and improve overall communication between newspaper buyers and sellers,” Craig Sinclair, vice president of advertising at Walgreen Co., said in a statement, E&P reported.