High or Low quality audience - AHC needs to choose

A recent press release from the Dallas Morning News touted their worse than average decline in circulation as a triumph. They made the bold statement that if they hadn't tried to reduce low quality audience they would have had a circulation gain. While press release puffery is quite common, this one in particular is troubling.

You see, this is the same company that just launced the "new-spam-per" known as Briefing. Briefing is delivered to non subscribers regardless of their desire to have it. It can only be considered the lowest quality circulation. I actually thing that papers are going to look a lot more like Briefing in the not too distant future, which may or not be a good thing

The press release implies that high quality audience delivers the highest possible ROI for advertisers.

It's one or the other. Quantity or quality. Briefing and the Dallas Morning News are trying to have it both ways, and one of them is clearly counter to a valid strategy.