Growth in Newspapers

A little reminder that the world of Newspapers is alive and kicking dropped into my mailbox this morning.Follow the Media reports that:

The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) hasn't much patience with the doom and gloom pundits who constantly report that newspapers are a dying industry, so this week it has produced some updated statistics to show the good news that newspaper circulation globally is growing and new newspapers are being launched far more frequently than may have been thought.

The growth though is coming from the developing world.Figures show that the number of free and paid for papers has grown 14% over the last 5 years.Figures in Europe however show a drop of 1.13% in 2005 after growth in the previous four years.

It is though the freebie which has produced these growth figures,137% increase in the 4 years to 2005,as the report points out:

What it doesn't tell us is how many of those readers are new and how many gave up their paid-fors to get a newspaper for free.

Tim Balding its CEO says

The figures show that there has been a quiet revolution in the number of daily launches. This burgeoning growth of daily titles worldwide has largely gone unnoticed by market makers and media pundits obsessed with the digital media revolution. But that does raise the question that are not newspaper publishers themselves obsessed with the digital media revolution and are they not trying to do everything they can to be a major part of that revolution?
These trends also indicate the widespread, but often overlooked innovation that is occurring in the newspaper industry. While much attention has been focused on digital development, the print product is also changing. Even in the most developed markets, there has been a proliferation of new genres of newspapers, targeting new audience segments and generating creative marketing and distribution scenarios. And the surge of new, free titles thrust into the paid-for market is the result of many publishers rethinking the cover-price revenue model in place for more than 400 years.