From the Long Island Press:

Newsday Writes Tribute On Judge Who Will Hear Its Case

Newsday wrote a real nice piece on Leonard Wexler who got a purple heart 60 years after he was wounded. This is all good, however:

"What Newsday's story failed to mention, however, is that Wexler is the judge set to preside over the $600 million lawsuit filed against the paper on behalf of advertisers claiming circulation fraud. Wexler's name is clearly stated on the first page of the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court. The document is available to the public. Newsday's editorial staff, which is conducting its own investigation into the paper's circulation misdeeds, almost certainly has a copy. "


This is why Long Island needs another daily newspaper - Newsday is anti-Catholic, biased in its reporting, and can't be trusted. But if you want to know what is going on here, you have no choice, and when Newsday is good, it is real good. I am a reader, and the other NY papers just don't cut it. They have more pictures of Britney Spears than informative articles. The Long Island Press is a free Village Voice wannabe that occasionally has some great stories, but is generally a paper for finding out what local band is playing in what local watering hole. Hopefully it will grow to become real competition for Newsday. Bill Donohue lays the smackdown on the paper in a recent press release: NEWSDAY SCANDAL REVEALS HYPOCRISY . Awesome thing is that much of it sounds like it could have been written by the bigot Jimmy Breslin (although unlike his writing this stuff is true):

"Here’s the way they do business at Newsday: they count dead people as subscribers; they deliver papers to burned down houses; they drop off bulk copies to dealers who have said they don’t want them; they cook their internal corporate reports; and they even alter affidavits by distributors to pump circulation figures. The extent of corruption is so common that they have even developed their own jargon: ‘Code 51’ means to continue delivering newspapers to customers who have cancelled their subscriptions or have stopped paying.

“The person in charge of the business side of Newsday, Ray Jansen, has been forced to retire early. James Klurfeld, editor of the editorial page, said today of Jansen that ‘nothing missed his gaze.’ Nothing? It gets better. Klurfeld then says of Jansen that ‘His power of observation was almost uncanny, as if he had X-ray vision.’ To make matters worse, Klurfeld tells us that Jansen ‘rose through the ranks of the advertising department’ and that his ‘talent was on the business side.’ He obviously doesn’t connect the dots—he has just indicted Jansen. "

**I dropped my subscription to Newsday months ago, but continued to receive the paper every Friday free of charge for a time.

Update: I just saw on Drudge that the Dallas Morning News also inflated their circulation and an executive there has resigned.