Tue, Jun 12, 2007 page9

• Newspapers holding their own against the Internet

  • By Peter Preston / THE OBSERVER
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  Fed up with tales of newspaper woe? Bored to distraction by dirges about digital demise? Then -- like a dose of salts -- try some quite exceptionally cheery statistics for a change: Global newspaper sales have gone up 2.3 percent last year and 9.48 percent in the past five years, while ad revenues have increased 3.7 percent and 15.7 percent over the same spans. If this is doom and gloom, give me another helping.

  Many feel that circulation figures like these, as diligently collated by the World Association of Newspapers, always look on the bright side because China, where circulation is up 15.5 percent since 2002, and India, where circulation is up 53.6 percent,skew everything. The depression in Europe and the US is palpable.

  Except that it's not. In fact, European paid-for daily titles sold 0.74 percent more copies last year than the year before. Add in free dailies -- and why not, because that's free print versus free screen -- and that's a 10.2 percent circulation rise year on year, or 12.2 percent since 2002.

  Maybe the tighter EU area showed a tiny drop on 2005, but there were still plenty of buoyant, fully developed stories to tell in Austria, Ireland, Italy and Portugal.

  Whatever happened to supposedly inexorable connections -- like the law that sees Internet media grow and print sink as though they were yoked together in some suicide pact? Vienna and Rome aren't exactly technical black holes, are they?

  Japan, where they sold 69.1 million copies a day last year, has computers on every desk. China -- at 98.7 million copies a day -- is also a supreme internet growth area.

  It's much too facile to hail simple cause and effect. Of course there are special circumstances everywhere you turn. Former communist countries in eastern Europe got a shot of democratic adrenaline when they joined the union -- more sales, more titles -- and now see that slip back a bit as the thrill wears off.

  Immigration, with influxes of people who don't read too easily or recognize many of the cultural icons, can also be a bit of a dampener.

  But look at the larger developed countries hanging in or around G8 status. After Italy, which is up year on year, but a bit down over five years, there are France, down 1.55 percent and 5.7 percent over five years, and Germany, down 2.1 percent and and 9.35 percent. Spain, which rose 2.14 percent year on year and dropped 1.13 percent over five years, did rather better. But guess who fared worst on both the one-year and five-year fronts?

  Yes, UK total circulation dropped 2.66 percent in 2005 and has fallen 12.5 percent since 2002. That's the lousiest result on offer. US dailies lost 1.9 percent last year and 5.18 percent over five years -- but even those figures are warped by the collapse of what's left of the evening paper market there, which is down 19.62 percent over five years.

  US morning papers have merely seen 2.52 percent of readers toddle away -- and their ad revenue grew 5.69 percent last year. For all the sound and gnashing fury, that is not nemesis.

  London's Fleet Street is well practised at lecturing the world on the virtues of professionalism and ruthless competition. Sometimes, indeed, it aspires to world leadership itself. Yet talking the talk isn't quite the same as walking the walk.

  Of course there all sorts of special factors to remember. Continental European papers don't have traditionally high market penetration levels. Histories, styles and audiences vary hugely. Distribution methods define what's possible -- or, in the case of the UK, what's impossible. And so much of the UK sales decline has come at the top end of the market. Nevertheless: the German market -- at 21.1 million -- is formidable in penetration and stability. Australian papers sold 2.1 percent more. Japanese devotion to the printed page has no rival. And these are all hi-tech, high-wage, high-development markets where the digital curse ought to be wreaking havoc -- but isn't.

  Which leaves us with only two speculative hints of a conclusion. Perhaps it isn't demonic digitalization that's bringing us down, dear friends. Perhaps it's just the UK's newspaper industry and what it produces. And perhaps the industry too damned morose about change. So perhaps, with a cheer, there's something more we can do.
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