“PEOPLE don’t actually read newspapers, they get into them every morning like a hot bath,” Marshall McLuhan once said. This must have given the reader the idea that our topic under discussion is the newspaper industry.
A newspaper is usually printed on a low-cost paper called ‘newsprint’. Most of us go through a newspaper on a daily basis. People prefer newspapers to other media in order to get a variety of information. We read newspapers to receive information on political events, crime, sports, opinion and weather etc. Newspapers have different sections that include editorial and op-ed pages, cartoons and other entertainment-providing portions. However, local or city news is often considered to be the most popular page of any newspaper.
Nearly 400 years of thinking has gone into making the newspaper industry a worthwhile one. Designers have devised a universal grammar that dictates what typefaces are appropriate for headlines, body copy and captions; how much white space is needed to balance the layout; how to use photographs etc. The natural potential strength of the print media lies in building its reputation as fair and accurate. Newspapers accentuate their credibility through appointment of ombudsman, ethical policies and stringent correction guidelines.
There are two major sizes of newspapers: standard or broadsheet and tabloid. Broadsheet is the traditional size, while tabloids are half its size. Daily newspapers are traditionally called ‘white collar newspapers’; in other words, they’re more likely to be read by professional people. The papers that appear in the afternoon are traditionally called ‘blue collar papers’, as they are more likely to be read by the working class people. There are also weekly newspapers for ‘news behind the news’ type of stories with more investigative journalism, analyses, columns and features. Furthermore, weekend newspapers include a great deal of ‘leisure’ reading with human-interest stories to make the paper more appealing to the reader.
At the international level, in the yellow journalism era of the 19th century, many newspapers used to be sensational and jingoistic. But during World War II, newspapers relied on fact-checking and professional accuracy with a restrained style of reporting. Newspapers, at present, have a vital, wider role to play in affairs of the state. Now, the relative autonomy of the print media significantly contributes to the evolution of multi-party democracy across the globe. Therefore, the press is now the fourth pillar of state, like the other three — executive, legislature and judiciary. Global circulation figures indicate that the figure of world-wide newspaper readership is well over one billion. Readers typically read only 25 per cent of their newspapers. There is a strong correlation between age and newspaper reading time with higher representation among old age groups. In Japan, in 1999 a readership survey revealed that the average time spent with a newspaper each day was 25.8 minutes a day. The 2004 World Press Trends survey reveals that China has the largest total daily circulation of any country in the world with more than 85 million copies sold, followed by India (more than 72 million copies), Japan (70,339,000 copies), and the United States (55,185,000).
India publishes a staggering number of newspapers. In 1998 alone, there were 43,828 registered newspapers in circulation in the country. In India, the National Readership Survey 1999 showed that not a single English language daily could be found in the top 10 newspapers in terms of their readership. However, individual newspaper reading rates remain low with only 28 copies sold for a population of 1,000, because of a high illiteracy rate. Still, some 76 million people are exposed to the print media. According to a comparative study launched by the South Asian Free Media Association (Safma), the total number of newspapers and publications in Pakistan is 497 dailies, 1,236 weeklies, 270 fortnightlies and 2,182 monthlies. The daily newspaper circulation per 1,000 people is 21. Though literacy in Afghanistan is only 20 per cent, an estimated 265 newspapers were published in 2002 in the country, with 150 distributed in the capital, Kabul, alone.
Although the reader finds advertisements, “the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper” according to Thomas Jefferson, intrusive and annoying newspapers make almost all their money from advertising. Newspapers can deliver a large audience to an advertiser. These days, newspaper advertising revenues are again on the upswing as world economy rebounds, but global newspaper circulation is slightly low, according to the annual survey of the World Press Trends published by the World Association of Newspapers.
Despite the fact that newspaper advertising revenues are increasing in many markets, their share in the world ad market declined from 31.2 per cent in 2002 to 30.8 per cent in 2003. But newspapers remain the world’s second largest advertising medium, after television, which took 38.8 per cent of world advertising expenditure in 2003. Global newspaper advertising revenue rose to two per cent in 2003 from a year earlier and is said to continue a steady increase till 2006.
Newspapers are still read, in spite of the fact that these days there are 13 billion pages of free content on the Internet for reading. However, e-editions make excellent sense for the readers who can’t purchase hard copies of newspapers on the day of publication. The number of newspaper websites has doubled since 1999.
Publishers shouldn’t be frightened of cannibalizing the current print readership, as a 21-inch computer monitor (a paltry 1.3 square feet) is no comparison to the four square-feet of an average broadsheet newspaper, a surface area that encourages the eye to hunt for interesting stories. “Reading electronic editions of newspapers makes you feel like a fat man trapped inside a size-too-small iron suit,” writes Jack Shafer in an article. As far as utility and comfort go, the resolution of even the best monitors isn’t as good as that of a newsprint.
In the future, newspapers have to work hard not only to rise to “the challenge of filling space” but also to keep their reputation of purposeful neutrality, dedication to conscientious journalism and helping the reader in making intelligent decisions about public issues, intact. At the same time failure in delivering quality content, inability in “connecting” with the reader, and being engaging without any depth may jeopardize standards of accuracy, fairness and good taste. Editor-in-chief and chief executive of a renowned group of publication once said: “If you produce valuable editorial, the rest will balance — readership, advertising, income. Like in life, I think fidelity in publishing is good for you.”
Newspapers are showing a greater willingness than ever before to innovate and experiment with future strategies to win new readers. The print media must adapt more quickly to the changes occurring in the media landscape, even though global newspaper circulation declined to 0.12 per cent in 2003 compared to a year earlier.
“PEOPLE don’t actually read newspapers, they get into them every morning like a hot bath,” Marshall McLuhan once said. This must have given the reader the idea that our topic under discussion is the newspaper industry.
