WAN President dismisses print naysayers again, as global circulation rises

This article was migrated from an old version of our website in 2025. As a result, it might have some low-quality images or non-functioning links - if there's any issues you'd like to see fixed, get in touch with us at info@journalism.co.uk.

Media commentators are 'oversimplifying a complex issue' by predicting the death of the newspaper and an online-only future, the president of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) has said.

Addressing WAN's Power of Print conference in Barcelona, Gavin O'Reilly said making such claims 'seems to have reached the level of a new sport'.

"That this doom and gloom about our industry has largely gone unanswered is, to me, the most bizarre case of willful self-mutilation ever in the annals of industry," he said, according to a WAN release.

"And it continues apace, with commentators failing to look beyond their simple rhetoric and merely joining the chorus that the future is online, online, online, almost to the exclusion of everything else. This is a mistake. This oversimplifies a rather complex issue."

O'Reilly echoed comments made at previous industry gatherings, where the Independent News and Media CEO slammed media commentators and dismissed predictions of the demise of print as 'sheer nonsense' .

According to the release, O'Reilly was again optimistic about the future of the print edition. Newspaper circulation grew by 1.3 per cent last year to almost 540 million sales, he said.

Over five years global newspaper circulation has increased by 8.8 per cent, he said.

The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) suggest the circulation of O'Reilly's own UK title, the Independent, has declined by 15.4 per cent between April 2008 and 2009.

World Press Trends report

O'Reilly based his figures on the forthcoming World Press Trends report to be published by WAN next month.

The figures were down on the report for 2007 which suggested newspaper sales rose by 2.57 per cent that year.

The report indicates that newspaper circulation increased in 2008 in Africa (+1.8 per cent), South America (1.8 per cent) and Asia (+2.9 per cent).

Markets showing a drop in circulation were North America (-3.9 per cent), Australia and Oceania (-2.5 per cent) and Europe (-1.8 per cent).

Growth in developing newspaper markets masks a downward trend in established markets to a certain extent, but is 'not the whole story', O'Reilly said.

"Whilst it may be true to say that in some regions, circulations are not a boom sector, newspapers continue to be a global mass media to be reckoned with, achieving a global average reach of over one third of the world's population," he said.

"So if we are a declining industry, the definition of declining is a strange one. We are an industry with massive reach of the global population and one that achieves massive revenues."

In terms of advertising, the report suggests that while newspaper advertising revenues fell by 5 per cent last year, newsprint still accounts for 37 per cent of world advertising revenues.

Online

According to the report, the combined print and online newspaper audience increased by 8 per cent in the US in 2008, with 81 per cent of online readers claiming to have read a print edition in the same week.

Responding to the figures, O'Reilly criticised the 'oversimplification' of media consumption into a 'spat between print and online'.

"Why must it always be a case of either or? Is it just possible that the consumer is capable of multi-tasking; is capable of consuming a multitude of media and that it need not necessarily be just online?" he said.