MOSCOW. (Andrei Kolesnikov, RIA Novosti political commentator)
The report of the death of the press and the newspaper market was an exaggeration, as proved by statistics in the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) report, World Press Trends 2006.
Let us start with a few figures indicative for basic trends. The year 2005 sent global newspaper sales up by 0.56%, and the previous five years by 6%, respective percentages for advertising revenues of dailies on sale coming as 1.21 and 11.7. Newspapers display amazing flexibility as a wide range of competitors pressures them ever stronger, Timothy Balding, WAN Director General, said in an address to the 59th World Newspaper Congress, underway in Moscow.
True, all those references concern a summary global effect, while certain details reveal not so radiant a picture. However, the good always promptly balances the bad, as other details of newspaper printing and buying indicate. Thus, a slight circulation drop in Europe and North America comes against a hopeful background of steady rises in Asia.
The circulation of paid-distribution dailies based in European Union countries dropped by 5.26% within the previous five years, but free-distribution newspapers are getting ever more popular in the same countries. France saw a 1.6% circulation reduction last year, and 7.38% for the previous five years, while Poland had a 9.8% and a 21.63% rises, respectively. Total circulation for the five years shrank by 7.48% in Norway. That country, with its vigorous newspaper culture, however, is the world's second, after Japan, for newspaper sales. Belgium's newspaper circulation dropped by 4.25% within the previous five years, yet its population leads the world for the average per capita time spent on reading newspapers, with 54 minutes a day. All countries except Russia on the BRIC group of emerging world leaders - Brazil, Russia, India and China - have rapidly developing newspaper markets. As for Russia, it has distribution problems and an insufficient effective demand. Besides, the WAN points out hardly reliable figures for Russian-based newspaper circulation.
In a word, the newspaper market is alive and kicking. Even if it ever dies, it will, anyway, last longer than the public expects. In tough competition with the television, the world web and multimedia information sources, newspapers prove extremely tenacious and adaptable. Possibly, that is because a newspaper is a material thing. You enjoy touching it, as any other object made on centuries-old handicraft techniques or technologies directly succeeding to them.
In some countries, the press is kept afloat by the noble public habit of reading. "To get up, have your morning cup of coffee - and no cigarette with it? What's the point of awakening, then?" renowned Russian poet Joseph Brodsky remarked one day. The people of certain countries do not see the point of starting a day unless they have a newspaper, with its invigorating rustle, to go with their morning coffee. In some places, the newspaper market is on the upswing with the rising public interest in tabloids and other entertaining media outlets, though the trend sends highbrow newspapers' circulation shrinking. Certain papers survive as they update their format, coming out in the A3 or B2 tabloid size, with color illustrations, somewhat simplified content, and little gifts for the reader, such as reduced-charge subscriptions to book series, video cassettes and DVDs.
All those attractions apart, the reading habit stays a tremendous power. More than that, readers cling for years to the same outlets. Berlin reunited long ago but its east neighborhoods stubbornly prefer the Berliner Zeitung to this day, while their west counterparts choose the Tagesspiegel, while both papers have the same owner. Izvestia, one of the most prominent Russian-based national dailies, several times changed its content, format and design within the preceding fifteen years. However, the readers opinion polls qualify as 55+, that is, people older than 55, still subscribe to it and buy it. They are loyal to the brand not the content or political sidings.
The Russian newspaper market is at death's door. That assumption has been a commonplace for years now. It is, however, too motley and loosely structured to make conclusions with whatever degree of certainty. If we are to make reliable forecasts, we need the next five years, at the shortest, to monitor its development. The Polish market, well structured and with clear-cut developmental trends, is an ideal model for Russian extrapolative studies, what with the two countries' geographic proximity and an extent of cultural affinity. The Polish newspaper world has few leaders. These are, first of all, the Gazeta Wyborcza and the Rzeczpospolita, pressed somewhat, of late, by the pushing newcomers - the tabloid Fakt and the quality newspaper Nasz Dziennik. An average Polish newspaper circulation approaches 500,000. The Polish press recurs to every marketing subterfuge lately invented in the West to attract readerships.
As we see it, newspaper publication and marketing will survive not only due to successful rivalry with the electronic outlets. Paradoxically as it may seem, newspaper salvation also lies in the extent to which the printed outlets borrow and accumulate the latest means of communication. Hopeful is the establishment of formidable media holdings, with a feedback and mutual support of newspapers and electronic and multimedia outlets.
Meanwhile, the newspaper remains a value in itself, the gem of Guttenberg's time and of the post-Guttenberg era. It is an essential part of global culture, with its inimitable rustle, color and smell, the unforgettable smell of printing ink.
