By Bob Quarteroni

"There are three kinds of lies," British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Bob Quarteroni (PennLive file)

And that certainly seemed to be the case here in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., population 40,000, one of the few two-newspaper cities left in America and the second smallest (Crawfordsville, Indiana, with a population of about 14,000 is the smallest).

Recently, both the Times Leader and the Citizens' Voice were proclaiming - loudly -- that they were the circulation leaders in the "Valley with a Heart," as it's been known for decades.

I've written for both newspapers over the decades - still do write for the outdoors page for the Citizens' Voice -- and I'm pretty familiar with the goings-on and who is up and who is down in the battle between the two papers that's been relentless for 40 years.

Even at my pay grade, I know that both can't be first so I contacted the nation's leading journalism journal, the Columbia Journalism Review, and told them what was going on and that I thought it deserved to be looked into.

The eventual story, "A decades-old newspaper battle rambles on in small-town Pennsylvania," appeared on Aug. 24.

It was satisfying to see what I started come to fruition. I figured if I lit this flame I had every right to throw a few more logs on the fire.

So, back to our story.

The CV, as it's known, was started by union members in 1978 after the out-of-town Capital Cities Communications bought the Times Leader.

Acrimonious negotiation between the Union and Cap Cities came to naught so many Times Leader union members first when on strike and eventually left and launched the Citizens' Voice, loudly and proudly known as the union paper for decades.

The paper was a tabloid - until recently - as opposed to the Times Leader broadsheet.

For 40 years they've been bickering but this seemed to kick it up a notch.

The CV fired the first bullet with a June 27 story saying it increased its Sunday and daily lead over the Times Leader, according to the most recent numbers released by the National Alliance for Audited Media.

It said the audited report showed the CV with a 2,615 lead in Sunday circulation for the fourth quarter of 2017, "the newspaper's largest margin, Circulation Director Joe Nealon said." The CV said it held a 4,327-newspaper edge in daily circulation.

Three weeks later, the Times Leader fired back with an audacious Page A1 lead article saying "it has increased its readership lead, thanks to hard work and engaged readers."

However, instead of relying on audited figures as the CV did, it trotted out "Scarborough Research, a Nielsen Company service," who said each print edition of the Times Leader Monday through Saturday "is read by an average of 74,631 people, for a lead of nearly 23,000 readers per edition over" the CV and on Sunday, 88,301 people read the paper's print edition, a lead of more than 30,000 readers.

The key word there is "read," not "bought." Scarborough used some extremely unlikely methodology to explain the Times Leader's lead.

The Times Leader said its Monday-Saturday print circulation for the first quarter of 2018 was15,750. To get to that figure, information that the Columbia Journalism Review obtained from the AAM "would mean that 4.7 people are reading each print copy of the paper."

"Come on!" Joe Nealon, the circulation director of The Citizens' Voice, told CJR. "There's not a paper in America that has four or five readers per copy. The average for the industry for the 30 years I've worked in newspapers? Two-point-three, two-point-four. It might have topped out at two-point-five at one point."

Or be even lower, a July 3 report by the National Newspaper Association on "Community Newspaper Facts and Figures" included a "2.3 pass-along rate."

Eldridge said that surveys like Scarborough's aren't considered as accurate as audited circulation reports.

"That likely has a lot to do with the way the survey results are gathered: Because not every reader of a newspaper can possibly be surveyed, Scarborough only phones and surveys a smaller, more reasonable number. The result? It can probably best be described as a guesstimate."

Of, in terms I would use, the Times Leader purposely fudged its results.

As a journalist, I am extremely troubled by the Times Leader's fuzzy math and spurious claims.

If, as a journalist, our prime mission is to tell the truth, fully and fairly, how can we condone this?

The simple answer is we can't.

I made my token gesture and cancelled my Times Leader subscription, which I've held for decades. But that's a piffle.

I know the Times-Leader is in dire straits, being forced to lay off employees, having their building sold out from under them and watching its owners, Civitas Media, sell all of its other newspapers across the country, leaving only the Times Leader standing, shakily.

So they have a right to worry. But they don't have a right to use made-up numbers to paint a rosy picture where there isn't one.

They were just wrong, and I'm happy the truth came out. In my opinion, the paper's leadership don't deserve the title of journalist. They have shamed the profession, and I can't forgive that.

Bob Quarteroni, a frequent PennLive Opinion contributor, is a former columnist and editor at the Centre Daily Times. He lives in Swoyersville, Pa. Readers may email him at bobqsix@verizon.net.