Global newspaper sales inched up last year, contradicting gloomy predictions that papers face extinction, as gains in Africa, Asia and Latin America offset slumps in Europe and the US, an industry group said today.
Newspaper sales grew 1.3% worldwide last year from 2007 to 539 million daily, a rise of 8.8% over the past four years, said Gavin O'Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers.
'The sector continues to grow,' he said at the start of a two-day WAN conference in Barcelona, adding media commentators were making a mistake when they predicted the death of daily newspapers.
Newspapers in wealthier nations are struggling due to the impact of the internet and the slump in advertising caused by the economic downturn.
Several US newspaper groups have declared bankruptcy in recent months, including the Tribune Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Baltimore Sun and several other newspapers. Two major US dailies, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain News, have shut down in the past few months, and dozens of others are threatened.
But in other markets like Asia, where a growing middle class is boosting the market for daily newspapers, the print media is thriving.
The Indian print media industry recorded growth of 16% in 2007 over the previous year, according to a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers presented at the conference.
The relative health of the sector in the region was underscored earlier this month when the Wall Street Journal began printing a regional edition of the business newspaper in India, the world's second-most populous nation.
Gavin O'Reilly said advertising revenues at dailies around the world fell by about 5% last year and predicted the drop should be even steeper in 2009 but he said the sector would 'rebound' once the global economic downturn ends.
He said the sector was facing a period of 'hyper change' with the appearance of new platforms for the distribution of information such as the Internet and mobile telephones, but it would find ways to adapt to this new environment.
He denied strongly that the future is 'only online'. WAN represents 18,000 newspapers from over 120 countries.
