Covid-19 accelerates the end of the paperweight across the world - France 24

Paris (AFP)

The decline of the print media has started a long time ago and has been gaining momentum across the world since the Covid-19 crisis: newspaper digital audiences have exploded but their sales of paper copies have collapsed or had to be suspended .

With the health crisis, it has become difficult to bring dailies to points of sale, and complicated for customers to obtain them.

The crisis has "almost certainly accelerated the transition to a 100% digital future", analyzes the 2020 report from the Reuters institute. It hits an industry already weakened by falling sales and advertising revenue, its two main sources of revenue.

In Brazil and Mexico, some of the biggest dailies have temporarily abandoned paper for all digital, or have blown up editions.

In the Philippines, 10 of the 70 press institute (PPI) member newspapers have had to close due to the pandemic. "Times are tough: there are no advertisers and no one reads us," PPI executive director Ariel Sebellino told AFP. Small local newspapers, which have seen their street sales collapse with the containment measures, are the most affected. "The industry is under siege. We are all bruised," he regrets.

Everywhere, the gradual disappearance of print editions affects the entire production chain: from journalists to newspaper vendors, including paper production, printers and delivery people.

In the UK, major newspaper brands gained 6.6 million readers online in the first quarter, a record according to their trade association.

But most newspapers have not recovered their paper sales figures. "It is the greatest threat to the global information industry since the economic crisis of 2008," warned the specialist magazine Press Gazette (which abandoned the paper in 2013). 250 local newspapers had already closed in the country between 2005 and 2018, and one in three journalists could lose their job.

- A niche audience? -

In the United States, dozens of newspapers have closed or merged with their local competitors since the start of the crisis, according to the Poynter Institute. American newspapers had already laid off half of their employees between 2008 and 2019, according to the Pew Institute.

Free newspapers, such as Metro and Destak in Brazil, or 20 Minutes in France, have also temporarily suspended their publication. Financed by advertising, and distributed in densely populated areas, their print editions were no longer necessary.

In Germany, "before the coronavirus crisis, all publishers were making money, even if the number of copies sold kept decreasing," the president of the Federation of German Journalists, Frank Überall, told AFP. "Today is very different", but "the written press has a bright future ahead", according to him. "There are still too many readers who want to hold their newspapers in their hands. And the elderly in particular are still far from using digital technology en masse."

"Printing is expensive, but it's bad for good," argues Gilles Dechamps, director of a printing house north of Paris. "It is important for readers, as for advertisers, to have this benchmark at the point of sale." The printer quotes brands like France-Soir and Métro, which have abandoned paper in France, and which "no one remembers".

During the last thirty years, newspapers have already tried to reduce their dependence on paper, by reducing their formats, by diversifying, and by investing in the internet. But most have not yet found the martingale.

"Even in the smallest markets, Facebook and Google siphon off three-quarters of digital revenues," said Penelope Abernathy, former vice president of the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, professor of media economics at the University of Carolina North. "The media share the remains".

The big ones could get away with it: The New York Times saw its online revenues exceed those of paper for the first time in the second quarter.

To survive, the smaller ones could also continue to become rarer and more expensive. Magazines that have successfully launched into print in recent years often target a niche audience.

“Printed paper will survive in some form,” emphasizes Penelope Abernathy, comparing newspapers with books, which survive digital.

There is a subscription-based future for magazines, for major newspapers a few days a week, "and we will nostalgically remember the era of dailies, that snapshot of the past 24 hours," concludes Abernathy.

© 2020 AFP