Sir, - Your Media Scope page of March 3rd had an interesting and well-researched article on the Sunday newspaper market. However, it significantly underplayed the success of the Sunday Times in Ireland. Your correspondent reported that we outsold the Sunday Business Post and Ireland on Sunday but failed to give us credit for besting the Sunday Tribune.
Our average sale in Ireland in the period July to December 1998 as audited by the ABC was 110,929, an increase of 6,400 copies (6.2 per cent) on the same period in 1997. This gave us a weekly lead of more than 25,000 over the Sunday Tribune, whose circulation fell 4.9 per cent compared with 1997.
The confusion may have arisen because your reporter looked at our sales for the Republic of Ireland only, rather than for all Ireland. Irish newspapers quote figures for the entire island and beyond. Thus, a fairer comparison is between our all-Ireland figure and the total circulation of the Irish-owned newspapers, even though the latter are inflated by sales in Britain and the US.
I should add that our sales have continued to grow in 1999 and averaged 114,495 in February. - Yours, etc., Syd Devine,
Circulation Manager, The Sunday Times, Pennington Street, London €1.