“From May 2009 to April 2011, the Wall Street Journal Europe had a deal with a Dutch company called Executive Learning Partnership by which ELP purchased thousands of copies of the Journal for a price as low as €0.01. If such deal is not uncommon, the scale was: 41% of the WSJE's total audited circulation was inflated via this little scheme. The deal also involved a positive coverage of ELP. On 11 October, the WSJE's publisher, Andrew Langhoff, resigned. [...] In most western markets, roughly 20% to 35% of the circulation of supposed paid-for newspapers is actually free.”
—How can we stop publishers inflating circulation? The WSJ Europe ‘scam’ highlights the fact that audiences, print or digital, are often artificially bought rather than naturally sold
