Magazines and Newspapers

Consumption: Newspapers

Newspapers were the first medium for formal distribution of mass information, the roots of which date to ancient Rome. After a period of handwritten proto-newspaper medium in the 17th century, printed newspapers gradually became the most important source of political, economic, sport, and cultural information during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Newspapers developed from periodical to weekly to daily. In the United States, the first newspaper was published in 1690 in Boston. The first U.S. daily came out almost 100 years later, in 1783 in Pennsylvania. In the 21st century, 216 of 260 countries or territories publish newspapers (83 percent of all countries). Japan, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Switzerland are the top five countries for newspaper sales per capita, while Mozambique, Uganda, Armenia, Zambia, and Botswana are the bottom five. Twenty-nine countries publish only non-daily titles. However, the advance of technological information and electronic media has resulted in the decline of printed newspapers as a leading information source.

Traditional consumers of newspapers over the centuries have been adults. Improvement in literacy on a global scale has been steadily increasing the numbers of readers. Globalization in the later 20th and early 21st centuries has also stimulated the popularity of newspapers and the emergence of many new titles in a period when the meganewspapers have been reducing their circulation and publishers have been closing or filing for bankruptcy.

The early 21st century is a particularly volatile period for newspapers worldwide, with established titles in the United States and western Europe in deep crisis. Several newspapers ceased publishing or scaled back their editorial operations due to declining revenues or issues particular to each paper's operation. In July 2011, the United Kingdom's best-selling Sunday newspaper, the News of the World, closed after 168 years when allegations of illegal telephone surveillance jeopardized the satellite television interests of its publisher. From 2001 to 2005, circulation increased by 7.8 percent (including free daily). So-called narrowcasting has [Page 492]splintered audiences into smaller and smaller slivers. Ranked at the top by circulation is Yomiuri Shimbun (10,021,000), Tokyo, Japan, Yomiuri Shimbun Group. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today are the most distributed U.S. newspapers (20th and 22nd, respectively, on the world list). In 2008, approximately 48.6 million copies were sold every weekday by the 1,408 daily U.S. newspapers. On Sunday, 902 newspapers sold 49.1 million copies, averaging 2.5 readers per copy. According to some prognoses, by 2017, printed newspapers will become insignificant in the United States.

Australia presents an exemplary case study of consumer interest in daily and weekly newspapers. There are 48 daily newspapers with a total circulation of 3,030,000, and 196 newspapers circulated per 1,000 people. The number of nondaily newspapers is 233, with total circulation at 374,000, and 24 newspapers circulated per 1,000 people. Newspaper consumption (minutes per day) is 35.6 percent of global daily newspaper circulations, including the free daily newspapers.

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