S K Khurana
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anifestly, the newspaper industry has radically changed across the world during the last five years while sustaining around three-year-long economic slowdown and competing with other channels of news dissemination driven by advancements in digital technologies. However, the pace of transformation has been remaining different region wise, witnessing moderate growth and decline of newspapers in Asia including India and the US as well as Europe respectively. The World Press Trends 2010 report shows that 1.7 billion people read a daily newspaper every day, representing 25 percent of the world’s adult population, and when non-dailies are added, the global reach of newspapers is 37 percent. Despite falling -0.8 percent in 2009, the daily newspaper circulation remained up +5.7 percent over five years. The number of newspaper titles world-wide was 12,477 in 2009, an increase of +1.7 percent from the previous year. The global newspaper advertising revenue which fell -17 percent in 2009 is also bouncing back and is expected to increase 3.5 percent in 2010, with growth in all regions, according to forecasts from Zenith Optimedia.
In this way, with 110 million copies sold daily, India has emerged as the largest market for newspapers, followed by China, Japan, USA and Germany, and more so sixty-seven of the world’s 100 largest daily newspapers belonging to Asia, making newspaper business a major and thriving industry. Accordingly, continuing huge investments in pre-press, in-press and postpress segments in the emerging markets are generating quite positive climate for all stake holders, tending constructive strengths to the industry. Even, new newspapers and editions are being introduced to fulfill the demand of news-content hungry audiences. By adopting new forms of print publishing and digital platforms, many newspaper houses in the mature markets are also succeeding through increasingly attracting audiences and rising revenues, as the opportunities to innovatively and comprehensively expand are still immense; just there is a need to identify and initiate. Pondering over this scenario, Christoph Riess, CEO of WAN-IFRA looks quite right when presenting the World Press Trends 2010 report he commented, “Frankly, I have noticed a tendency amongst media journalists and commentators to dwell on the negative aspects of the business when it is clear there is much to be positive about.”
Amid all these developments purporting ‘structural change’ in the news publishing industry, AAN has effectively evolved keeping you abreast analytically more frequently and now is poised to celebrate its 5th anniversary with this special issue on the occasion of WAN-IFRA India 2010 Conference. Being committed to serve all concerned betterly, we have strived to present an easy track of almost all major developments in newspaper industry during the last five years apart from outlook for the coming years with in-depth write-ups in the following pages. Finally, warmly thanking you for your ceaseless constructive support and enthusiastic appreciation helping us in reach up to the present level, we wish you all a rewarding time ahead!
