Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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The difference in circulation between the European countries and China, India, Japan and the 
US is put into long(er)-term perspective in Figure 25. For the EU27 as a whole there are only 
figures for 2005-2009. In the EU circulation dropped with almost 13% between 2005 and 
2009. The United States and Japan also show negative circulation growth. Especially in the 
United States, the decline has increased between 2005 and 2009. In contrast India and China 
are large growing markets. In India, between 2005 and 2009, circulation grew by 
approximately 40%, but their gains may be temporary once internet penetration and computer 
use will start to grow in these countries (Pew research center's project for excellence in 
journalism, 2011).
Figure 25: Development of circulation 1996-2009
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A perspective on developments in the US over an even longer period is given in Error! 
Reference source not found.Figure 26 which shows how daily circulation of print 
newspapers has been declining since the 1980s in the US, when increasingly, users started 
using a more diverse palette of media sources for their daily news consumption (Thierer & 
Eskelsen, 2008). The number of daily newspapers printed, started to decline already a decade 
earlier.
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Data sources are (WAN, 2010), 
http://www.wan-press.org/article7321.html
and 
http://www.wan-
press.org/ce/previous/2001/congress.forum/wpt/circulation.html

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Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
74
 
Figure 26: Daily newspapers US, total number and circulation 1940-2007
Source: Newspaper Association of America, in: Thierer & Eskelsen, 2008. 
In an article in the New York Times in 2009, Pfanner compared the European situation on the 
newspaper market to the American situation (Pfanner, 2009). Because European newspapers 
are less dependent on advertising income than their American counterparts, the economic 
downturn seems to have a more moderate effect on their income. Also, readership is 
declining, but at a slower pace than in the United States. Although the author acknowledges 
that a large number of European newspapers are struggling to survive, he also points to a 
number of successful newspaper publishers. Axel Springer, a large German publisher, is 
doing fairly well, and so does Norwegian publisher Shibsted, which is generating 
approximately 25% of its income out of online activities. In the US several newspaper 
publishers went bankrupt or carried heavy debt burdens. This happened, despite the fact that 
they were still making money, but they were no longer able to make their bank payments. 
This has not happened to the same extent in European countries (Pew research center's project 
for excellence in journalism, 2011), where many newspaper publishers are still profitable, 
though far less than in previous decades and often with a reduced workforce and news output, 
if not in quantity than in the number of municipalities, regions, countries or issues covered or 
in the depth and quality of the reporting.