Putting to rest the predictions of an 'imminent death', newspapers saw their worldwide circulation rising to 540 million copies a day in 2008 despite a downturn in the global economy, the World Association of Newspapers said on Wednesday.
"Despite the global financial crisis, newspaper circulation grew 1.3 per cent worldwide in 2008," WAN president Gavin O'Reilly said in Barcelona, while contradicting the 'misleading reports predicting the imminent death of newspapers'.
Elaborating on the current state of the newspaper industry, the WAN President said that 1.9 billion people read a paid daily newspaper every day and newspapers reach 41 per cent more adults than the world wide web.
"More adults read a newspaper every day than people eat a Big Mac every year," he added.
As per the preliminary data to be included in World Press Trends, the annual report from WAN to be published next month, global newspaper circulation increased by 1.3 per cent in 2008 to almost 540 million daily sales. This represents an increase of 8.8 per cent over the past five years.
After adding the free dailies, the circulation rose by 1.62 per cent in 2008 and by 13 per cent over five years.
"The simple fact is that, as a global industry, our printed audience continues to grow," O'Reilly said.
While the financial crisis has clearly had a serious impact on newspaper revenues, the downturn is not worse for newspapers than for other industries, said O'Reilly, who is also CEO of Independent News and Media.
"This is not to deflect the seriousness of the situation, and it is very serious, but it remains a fact - all major media are suffering alongside our colleagues in other major business sectors," O'Reilly said in a speech opening the WAN Power of Print Conference in Barcelona.
On criticism that the growth was taking place in the developing markets and the figures masked a continued downward trend in the developed markets, he said that it was 'not the whole story, as newspaper companies in these markets have embraced digital technologies to further improve their audience reach'.
"Predicting the death of newspapers seems to have reached the level of a new sport," he added.
According to WAN, Paris-based global organisation for the industry, the newspaper advertising revenues were down by 5 per cent in 2008, but print media still takes 37 per cent of world advertising revenues.
O'Reilly further said that commentators were failing to look beyond their simple rhetoric and were 'merely joining the chorus that the future is online, online, online, almost to the exclusion of everything else. This is a mistake. This oversimplifies a rather complex issue.'
O'Reilly said that circulation may not be booming in some regions, but 'newspapers continue to be a global mass media to be reckoned with, achieving a global average reach of over one third of the world's population.'
As per the preliminary annual data for 2008, newspaper circulation increased 6.9 per cent in Africa last year, 1.8 per cent in South America and 2.9 per cent in Asia.
However, it fell by 3.7 per cent in North America, by 2.5 per cent in Australia and Oceania and 1.8 per cent in Europe.
"But in many mature markets where circulation is declining, newspaper reach remains high -- many European countries continue to reach over 70 per cent of the adult population with paid newspapers alone. In Japan, it's 91 per cent. In North America, it's 62 per cent," WAN said.
It further noted that circulation gains were not only occurring in the emerging markets of China and India, and 38 per cent of countries reported gains in 2008, and 58 per cent saw circulation increasing over five years.
In the US, combined print and online newspaper audience grew 8 per cent, while 52 per cent of online newspaper readers spent the same amount of time as they did previously with newspaper content there. Besides, 35 per cent spent more time overall with newspaper content, and 81 per cent of online newspaper readers say they read a printed newspaper in the same week.
