Sales of newspapers edged up worldwide by more than two per cent in 2004, Internet traffic grew 32 percent, advertising revenue recorded significant gains and India, China and Japan were the world’s biggest newspaper markets in 2004, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) said on Monday.
In its report on trends in the newspaper industry, WAN said 395 million copies of newspapers were sold daily in 2004 and read by an estimated one billion people worldwide.
China, India and Japan were the world’s biggest newspaper markets in 2004 and China overtook Japan as the country with the highest number of publications in the world’s top 100.
“It has been an extraordinarily positive 12 months for the global newspaper industry,” said Timothy Balding, Director General of the Paris-based WAN. “We have come to expect big circulation gains in developing countries, but it has been a very long time since we saw such a revival in so many mature markets. Newspapers are clearly undergoing a renaissance through new products, new formats, new titles, new editorial approaches, better distribution and better marketing.”
Three-quarters of the world’s 100 best selling daily newspapers were now published in Asia where sales were up 4.1 per cent for the year.
Worldwide newspaper circulation grew 2.1 per cent, the number of daily titles was up two per cent and advertising revenue rose 5.3 per cent, its biggest jump in four years, the WAN report said.
From the report:
Advertising
Advertising revenues declined in the five-year period in seven EU countries for which data was available; Finland, -3.22 percent; France, -23 percent; Greece, -0.26 percent; Italy, -16.33 percent; Spain, -6.28 percent; Sweden, -15.8 percent; and the United Kingdom, -6.31 percent.
- In Russia, newspaper advertising revenues increased 31 percent in 2004, compared with a 17 percent increase in 2003.
- In Australia and New Zealand, revenues were up 7.6 percent and 14.7 percent respectively over one year.
Internet
- Internet traffic grew 32 percent last year and 350 percent over five years for the newspaper web sites for which data is available over several years.
- Internet advertising revenues continue to grow rapidly, and were up 21 percent in 2004, the highest growth for five years.
Free Dailies
- The size of the free daily market in several countries is impressive; in Spain, free daily distribution represents a huge 40 percent of the market; in Italy, 29 percent; in Denmark 27 percent, and in Portugal, 25 percent.
Link
Not good, the frogeaters has not understood the importance of the EU Treaty. I think the rest of us should kick them out of the Union. They could go together with Greece.. Nevermind…
Here are some european newspapers frontpages about the election, you can click them and view the page in full.
France
Germany
Austria
Belgium
Croatia
Czech Republic
Denmark
Italy
Netherlands
Poland
Sweden
Samsung Electronics president Hwang Chang-gyu on Sunday sought to reassure print journalists that new IT media will not spell the end for newspapers, which allow people access to
“important and deep information in an orderly way.â€
In a keynote address on “Inspiration of the Semiconductor for Ubiquitous Media†at the 58th World Newspaper Congress, which opened in Seoul on Sunday, Hwang said,
“Despite the appearance of new media forms due to the IT revolution, newspapers will maintain and, in fact, consolidate their position.â€
From Digital Chosunilbo, South Korea. Link
More Korean news here
And here:
Two newspapers in Nepal came under fire yesterday for their reports saying the royal government was planning new limits on the media on top of restrictions already imposed when King Gyanendra seized control of the country in February.
The Press Council, a nominally independent panel that monitors the media but which is widely considered to favor the king’s administration, said the reports in the Kantipur and Kathmandu Post newspapers were groundless and based on speculation.
The council demanded that the two newspapers clarify why they published the reports, giving them seven days to respond. The newspapers said they stood by their story.
“We will protest and fight the allegations. We stand by our story and believe it was an attempt by the government to control the media,” Kantipur news editor Gunaraj Luitel said.
Visit Nepalese newspapers here
The newspaper Detroit Free Press last week published this graphic about their editing process at the paper.
Journalist Ernst Poulsen writes at Poynter Online:
Two more Danish newspapers decided to ask readers to register in order to let them “through the gates.” Berlingske.dk has chosen a “silver/gold” subscription model, where those who pay for a subscription to the newspaper get access to more features. Information.dk has chosen a simple model: Five articles are free; everything else requires payment or subscription.
“..I wonder whether the newspapers understand me. I subscribe to three different papers at home, and I could probably find log-in information for just about any Danish newspaper at work. But — even though it’s part of my job — I can’t remember the last time I bothered.”
Link
The US military has condemned the Sun [U.K] for publishing photographs of a captive Saddam Hussein and said it was “aggressively” investigating who took them. Today’s paper carries a series of photographs showing the former Iraqi dictator in his cell, including one on the front page showing him in his underwear. Another shows him washing clothes under the headline “Tyrant? He’s washed up”. The Sun says it obtained the photos from “US military sources” who handed them over “in the hope of dealing a body blow to the resistance in Iraq”.
“Saddam is not superman or God, he is now just an ageing and humble old man,”
the paper quotes its source as saying. “It’s important that the people of Iraq see him like that to destroy the myth.”
From http://www.spj.org/
Read newspapers from UK here
Read the SUN in full text here:
TV reporter Arthur Chi’en was fired by US channel WCBS/Ch. 2 yesterday after he shouted the F-word at two meddlers who horned in on his live shot. Chi’en was in the middle of a 6a.m. broadcast about MetroCard scammers when two men sneaked up behind him with a sign promoting radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony. For a few moments, as the knuckleheads heckled him and gave the finger to the camera, Chi’en kept his cool and continued talking. But as soon as he finished his report, he spun around and shouted at the intruders:
“What the f— is your problem, man?”
If he thought the WCBS control room had already cut to tape, he was wrong. The expletive went out over the air.
-So much for the freedom of the spoken word…
China: potential new free daily to compete with Metro
Asia Media reports that the real estate giant Centaline is in talks with the Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation to distribute a new free newspaper at railway stations. If the deal becomes a reality, the free paper could have a potential readership base of up to 980,000 people. The new paper would target affluent audiences and would have to compete with Metro Daily, which already distributes 302,000 editions in other transportation stations. While the new paper is on a hunt for editorial, advertising, and marketing staff, Metro has reported the recent loss of several editors and other staff. The new daily will undoubtedly face an uphill battle in the already crowded media market, but having ties to Centaline’s property outlets might increase the paper’s chances for success. The paper will hopefully publish the first edition in a few months and is set to have an initial print run of 100,000 copies a day.
See the best chines newspapers here
Or read todays China Daily in full lengt here
Reporters Without Borders calls the Iraqi conflict the deadliest for journalists since Vietnam, with 56 journalists and media staff killed and 29 kidnapped since fighting began in March 2003. This week, two more journalists lost their lives.
On 15 May 2005, armed men killed Najem Abed Khudair and Ahmed Adam near Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, reported RSF and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). The journalists were heading toward the holy city of Kerbala when the armed men intercepted them and reportedly slit their throats.
Khudair worked for the independent daily newspapers “Al-Mada” and “Tariq al-Shaab”. Adam, a poet and writer, was a contributor to “Al-Mada” and “Sabah”, a newspaper launched after the start of the conflict. The Iraqi army said on 16 May that it had arrested nine suspects.
RSF says 11 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of this year.
Newspapers from Iraq
From IFEX
Syrian opposition figures and intellectuals were for the first time since the ruling Baath Party came to power in 1963 allowed Tuesday to express views in a government-run newspaper.
The Tishreen newspaper provided space on its cultural page for opposition figures to comment on long-awaited changes in the country and measures expected to be adopted at the Baath Party Regional Conference in June.
The opponents, including left-wing writer Michel Kilo, are known for their long-time fight for more political freedoms. Some were jailed on charges of belonging to banned organizations and engaging “in anti-revolution political actions.”
See the most important newspapers in Syria here
Link
Uzbek officials block news outlets amid massive protests
Uzbek authorities shuttered several foreign and domestic media outlets today during massive anti-government protests in the northeastern city of Andijan, leaving citizens without access to independent news about the unrest, according to local and international press reports.
Authorities blocked access to the foreign television channels CNN, BBC, and Moscow-based NTV at noon after 4,000 protesters stormed a prison in Andijan, freed up to 2,000 inmates, and seized the city administration building earlier in the day, according to press reports.
Major news Web sites such as Ferghana.ru, Lenta.ru, and Gazeta.ru were inaccessible for several hours in the country, according to local press reports. In Andijan, authorities took the popular radio station Didor off the air. Journalists said the city was unreachable by mobile telephone and had only limited landline connections.
See the best online newspapers in Uzbekistan here
From IFEX
Another free daily, Dicen, is to be launched in Madrid and Barcelona, according to PeriodistaDigital. Distributing a total of 200,000 copies between the two cities, the 24-page colorful paper claims to be the first Spanish free daily to cover “themes of the heart.” It will be distributed using traditional freebie methods, at metro stops, hair stylists and supermarkets. Although the editorial staff has not yet been chosen, the new daily plans to launch in September.
Source: PeriodistaDigital (in Spanish) Via Editorsweblog.
Besides updating NewspaperIndex I am working as a consultant and freelance journalist. Recently I have begun writing for a Scandinavian company Mediaplanet.
Their business is to make supplement editions for newspapers. The last one I wrote for them was ‘Private Investmentâ€. It had 16 pages and was distributed with the major Danish financial newspaper Børsen. Right now I am writing another one that will be published with the largest newspaper in Denmark in June.
I write about half of the pages in the supplements and the rest are sold for advertising by two young talented salesmen in Copenhagen. The company started in Sweden but after a few years they no have offices and regular supplements in four countries and they are still expanding.
Mediaplanet has in such a short period of time become one of the most successful companies within the “paper in paper†industry.
I really like this job, but I wonder as a newspaper enthusiast, why in the world doesn’t the established newspapers go for this market? Hey, wake up. Startup kids are making millions on YOUR readers using YOUR newspapers!
Circulation is going down all over the world, journalists are fired and no one in the newspaper industry are thinking in new business models except from the recognized ‘media industry insiders’ that continues giving outdated suggestions.
In this photo released by the Rawalpindi Islamabad Photojournalists Association, Police commandos in plainclothes arrest Pakistani journalists before the Parliament, Tuesday, May 3, 2005 in Islamabad, Pakistan. Police baton-charged a group of journalists, arrested 30 of them to prevent a protest rally to mark World Press Freedom Day, but hours later freed them, officials and journalists said.
Via http://blackpropaganda.blogspot.com/
Newspapers from Pakistan
Following in the footsteps of Aftenposten, four Norwegian dailies, Adresseavise, Bergens Tidende, Stavanger Aftenblad, and Faedrelandsvennen, have appointed a joint committee to discuss changing to tabloid format. All papers are exhibiting much enthusiasm for the trend which has been sweeping Europe for a year and a half and which is becoming popular the world over.
Link
Via http://www.editorsweblog.org/
See the best online newspapers from Norway here.
Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that the media can spread peace but also foment violence, and he called on journalists to exercise responsibility to ensure objective reports that respect human dignity and the common good.
“These important tools of communication can favor reciprocal knowledge and dialogue, or on the contrary, they can fuel prejudice and disdain between individuals and peoples; they can contribute to spreading peace or fomenting violence.”
Benedict made the comments during a brief appearance at his studio window to bless thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square
From Associated Press
Pope Calls on Media to Report Responsibly - Yahoo! News
Last week Google announced the beta release of the Google Web Accelerator. Basicaly the tool is delivering cached content, auto-zipping stuff you are downloading and tweaking your connection a bit.
The Google Web Accelerator will also learn your surf-patterns and get you those dirty pages before you even think about going there :-)
The technology might violate content providers writes
Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine:
It’s one matter when the search engine caches a page you can’t get anymore; that’s a copyright violation but an all-in-all benign one in the sense that it’s only giving you content you could not otherwise see (no different from, say, the web archive). But it’s quite another matter for Google to get in the way of serving current content. This means that the page is served from Google rather than from a publisher’s server, which means that the publisher cannot count the traffic and serve targeted and dynamic advertising. It also means that Google is copying content on its servers and serving it from there and thus is violating copyright.
Via http://www.spj.org
Chris Crain, editorial director of the gay newspaper chain Windows Media, was beaten by seven men in Amsterdam, Holland, as he was walking hand-in-hand with his boyfriend early Saturday morning. Crain described the gay-bashing in a first-person story scheduled for publication Friday in the Washington (D.C.) Blade, one of several papers owned by Windows. Crain and William Waybourn founded the chain in 1996. “I was covered in blood, mostly from my nose,” Crain wrote, “but I got lucky: no broken bones, no damage to my vision, just some very nasty bruises and a lot to think about.” In the article, headlined “Looking hate in the face,” Crain said he never imagined that he would be beaten up for being gay in the gay-friendly Netherlands, where same-sex marriage is legal and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is against the law. “As a child of the South, where ‘fag’ and ‘queer’ were everyday insults, I would have expected a fist to the face somewhere back home for sure,” he wrote.
From: Society of Professional Journalists
“We, editorial directors of European media, express
our support for Florence Aubenas, special
correspondent for the French daily newspaper
Libération, and her Iraqi guide Hussein Hanoun,
kidnapped in Iraq on 5 January 2005 as well as reporter
Mari Jeanne Ion and cameraman Sorin Dumitru
Miscoci of the Romanian television station, Prima TV,
and Eduard Ovidiu Ohanesian of the privately-owned
daily newspaper, Romania Libera.
We reaffirm that there can be no freedom without the
freedom to inform the public, everywhere and in every
place. This freedom is a fundamental right that every
one of us should work to defend and promote. In
addition, we call on all European institutions and
member countries of the Union, to redouble their efforts
for the two hostages. And, more than that, that they
make themselves active defenders of press freedom,
without which democracy cannot function.
Today, Florence Aubenas, Hussein Hanoun, Mari
Jeanne Ion, Sorin Dumitru Miscoci and Eduard Ovidiu
Ohanesian need all of us.â€
Almost 200 European editors and senior news
executives have signed this statement to date.
Libération
The World Association of Newspapers
The World Editors Forum
Reporters Without Borders.
For further information go to www.rsf.org or www.editorsweblog.org
List of participants in todays campaign for journalists kidnapped in Iraq:
The Times, UK
El Pais, Spain
El Mundo, Spain
El Periodico de Catalyuna, Spain
Die Welt, Germany
Trouw, The Netherlands (4 may)
Rotterdams Dagblad, The Netherlands (4 may)
Dagblad de Limburger, The Netherlands (4 may)
Der Standard, Austria
Publico, Portugal
The Irish Times, Ireland
Aftenposten, Norway
Politiken, Denmark
NewspaperIndex, Denmark
Turun Sanomat, Finland
To Vima, Greece
SME, Slovakia
HVG, Hungary
Eesti Päevaleht, Estonia
Tageblatt, Luxembourg
Le Quotidien, Luxembourg
Le Jeudi, Luxembourg
Gibraltar Chronicle, Gibraltar
James Gorion writes in a comment at www.newsdissector.org:
When was the last time a White House correspondent actually asked a tough, challenging question of either the President or the press secretary? Lyndon Johnson and Marlyn Fitzwater got them all the time; so did Richard Nixon and Ron Ziegler. The puddingheads assigned to cover the Bush White House haven’t asked a tough question since they were concerned about the lunch menu’s.
The current situation is more than a pity; it is a derelection of the media’s duty, especially in an era when the administration goes out of its way to obfuscate, deceive, and downright lie.”
Nixon got the tough questions reporters don´t dare to ask anymore.
From:
News Dissector Blog
And heres an interesting quote from Bruce Springsteen that was brougth in the October issue 2004 of Rolling Stones:
The press has let the country down. It’s taken a very amoral stand, in that essential issues are often portrayed as simply one side says this and the other side says that….The job of the press is to tell the truth without fear or favor. We have to get back to that standard.
Via Editors Weblog via Editor and Publisher via Mediachannel.org..yes I know, fourth hand news…
The New York Times, exploring new revenue streams for its Web site, is polling readers to see whether they would be willing to pay $50 a year to gain extensive access to its archives.
The newspaper is surveying registered users of NYTimes.com about two different subscription models. Under one, you would pay an annual fee of $49.99 for unlimited access to all Times articles from the past 365 days. Under the other, you would pay the same price for access to up to 100 articles per month from the Times archives since 1851.
-Writes David Kesmodel from The Wall Street Journal Online. Link
Talented norwegian journalist Olav Andreas Øvrebø has some interesting reflections about design of well-doing online newspapers in Norway.
“A sober, logically arranged, correct look would send the wrong signals - lofty, intellectual, cultural, and worst of all, boring. In Norwegian printed newspapers, high and low are always mixed. Sophisticated political reporting next to the most horrid crime stories. An aversion to cultural analysis, and a love of sports analysis. The most successful websites replicate the model online.”
Link to the article “The Drunken Sailor theory of web behaviour”
Newspapers in Norway
(Did you know that more newspapers are read in Norway than in any other country)
Today is the World Press Freedom Day World Association of Newspapers has built this multi-language site to inform about the day. The slogan this year is “Getting away with murder”. Regular readers of this blog will recognize that headline as appropriate.
Hey there is more comments to my post about the
Giuliana Sgrena case.
And don´t forget Journalist David Isaac
Islamabad, May 2 : Many Indian newspapers have sought the Pakistan’s government permission to start publication of editions in Islamabad and Karachi, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Monday.
Ahmed disclosed this in an interview with a private TV channel, Online news agency reports.
He said Indian newspapers have made written requests to President Pervez Musharraf to allow them to launch editions in Pakistan as a confidence building measure.
Drawing by Afshin Sabouki
Ahmed also noted the era of yellow journalism had ended in Pakistan.
Link
View newspapers from India
Newspapers from Pakistan
Consumers of newspapers are getting harder to handle for the biased newsroom. Readers are more informed, more powerfull, higher educated and more globalized than ever:
â– They study alternative perspectives and world views, learning how
to interpret events from multiple viewpoints.
â– They seek understanding and insight through multiple sources of
thought and information, not simply those of the mass media.
â– They learn how to identify the viewpoints embedded in
news stories.
â– They mentally rewrite (reconstruct) news stories through awareness
of how stories would be told from multiple perspectives.
â– They analyze news constructs in the same way they analyze
other representations of reality (as some blend of fact and
interpretation).
â– They assess news stories for their clarity, accuracy, relevance,
depth, breadth, and significance.
â– They notice contradictions and inconsistencies in the news
(often in the same story).
â– They notice the agenda and interests served by a story.
â– They notice the facts covered and the facts ignored.
â– They notice what is represented as fact (that is in dispute).
â– They notice questionable assumptions implicit in stories.
â– They notice what is implied (but not openly stated).
â– They notice what implications are ignored and what are
emphasized.
â– They notice which points of view are systematically put into a
favorable light and which in an unfavorable light.
â– They mentally correct stories reflecting bias toward the unusual,
the dramatic, and the sensational by putting them into perspective
or discounting them.
â– They question the social conventions and taboos being used to
define issues and problems.
From http://www.criticalthinking.org
Interesting followup on Giuliana Sgrena case, the freed Italian journalist who was shot at by American troops upon her release. Yesterday the italian public received this PDF file containing an extremely detailed U.S. military report on the alleged accident. Many lines in the report were “blacked out” as the author probably considered them unclassified, yet sensible information (like the name of who the guy who shot the car).
The funny things is that the american military don´t know how to handle pdf-files. The black-outs have been removed and all the critical lines are revealed!
Here is the unblackened report[DOC Format] in all its details.
Thanks to user elpapacito at Metafilter for this story.
Newspapers from Iraq
Update 4/5 2005:
For some reasons people are very angry at me for linking to these documents.
Here are some quotes from readers about me from the last few days debate:
‘I think you are a punk’
‘..scum’
‘..you behave as an irresponsible citizen’
‘..vulture’
It’s no wonder that some daily newspapers in America are suffering from a credibility problem when two of the country’s largest papers were recently caught running stories on events that never happened, writes The Nashua Telegraph today.
In one case, the writer is a nationally known and respected author.
Mitch Albom, author of two bestsellers, is a sports columnist for the Detroit Free Press. A few weeks ago, faced with an early deadline, he inserted an item in his column that never took place. Writing before an NCAA basketball tournament game was played, he told his readers about two former Michigan State stars who attended the game.
Great story, except that it never happened.
That second paper is The Boston Globe.
A few weeks ago, the Globe ran a story, submitted by a freelance correspondent, about a seal hunt in Nova Scotia that never took place. The Globe ran a correction immediately following the non-event:
“An article by a freelance writer based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Wednesday’s Globe said the season’s hunt for baby seals off Newfoundland had begun the previous day. In fact, the hunt did not begin that day. It was delayed by bad weather and is scheduled to begin today, weather permitting.
“The article included details of the day’s hunt as if it had taken place and without attribution or other sourcing, as if the writer had witnessed the scene personally. . .
“Because the free-lancer was not reporting from the scene, editors should have demanded attribution for any details she provided about the hunt itself. The story should not have been published in the Globe, and the Globe has discontinued use of the free-lancer.â€
Link
View my selection of the best american newspapers here. Boston Globe and Detroit Free Press are not included :-)
Read the story I posted last week about this.
