Every quarter the Audit Bureau of Circulation certifies the circulation of its member newspapers.

McHenry County’s dominant daily, the Northwest Herald, has been aggressively courting potential subscribers.

Besides phone calls, repeated phone calls, I might add, last Friday a man was sitting at a card table in Menard’s offering subscriptions for $2 a week. And, not only that, the pitch went, a gift card, too. $25-$50, if memory serves me correctly.

In any event, comparing end of March circulation figures with those six months later shows the Northwest Herald maintaining its sales while the industry as a whole is declining.

Daily circulation went up 138 t0 31,192, while Sunday paper sales went up 654 to 34,666.

Looking at what I have put up below from the ABC, I see the NWH’s figures are listed as “preliminary figures subject to audit.”