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The banner across the paper's front page reads "A positive paper, for a positive people," but that motto apparently has not been applied when it comes to fair play and ethical business practices at the Westside Gazette.
This week another publication, The-New-Times, (www.newtimes.com) produced a scathing report detailing inflated circulation numbers by the weekly Westside Gazette, which could possibly lead to a bevy of lawsuits, criminal investigations and loss of business.
Newspapers use circulation numbers to justify charging advertisers premium prices to buy ads and to set rates in their publications. Papers across the country have been exposed in recent months for inflating their circulation numbers to charge higher advertising rates. That has led to numerous ongoing criminal probes by the Internal Revenue Service, the Securities & Exchange Commission, the U.S. Attorneys Office, FBI, and countless other state and local agencies. Advertisers have been fighting back and filing lawsuits to recoup money they contend they may have been cheated out of by papers that inflated their circulation numbers.
"The newspaper [Gazette] has been claiming false circulation levels for years and has used the trumped-up numbers to fleece taxpayers," wrote investigative reporter Bob Norman in the New Times article this week. "Broward County is just one of many government customers of the black-owned publication, which is...