A new OECD report looking at “The Future of News and the Internet”. It contains new data and analysis on the global newspaper industry and the challenges presented by the Internet. Its main message is that “large country-by-country and title-by-title differences and the data currently do not lend themselves to make the case for “the death of the newspaper”, in particular if non-OECD countries and potential positive effects of the economic recovery are taken into account.” The full report, including data and charts, is available here.

After very profitable years, newspaper publishers in most OECD countries face declining advertising revenues, titles and circulation. The economic crisis has amplified this downward development.

About 20 out of 30 OECD countries face declining newspaper readership, with significant decreases in some OECD countries. Newspaper readership is usually lower among younger people who tend to attribute less importance to print media. In OECD countries, the general, regional and local press have been hardest hit and 2009 was expected to be the worst year for OECD newspapers, with the largest declines in the United States, the United Kingdom, Greece, Italy, Canada, and Spain (but much a much smaller impact on countries such as Austria, Australia.

But in emerging economies, for example, the average daily paid newspaper circulation has been growing for a number of years by about 35 per cent in the BIICS countries from 2000 to 2008, most notably India with a 45 per cent increase in circulation between 2000 and 2008, South Africa (34 per cent) and China (an estimated 29 per cent). Other countries and continents, including Africa and South America, are also gaining readers. This rise has compensated for the drop in OECD paid circulation and led to an actual increase in the number of world newspapers – by 14 per cent from 2002-2008.

The report also analyses who is reading news online: one key finding is that for the most part reading news online complements other forms of news rather than replaces it. Most surveys show that active offline newspaper readers tend to read more news online. In some OECD countries, more than half of the population read newspapers online but at the minimum one in five people do so. The willingness to pay for online news is low but increasing, it says.

The report also looks at the business and policy issues facing the industry. Among these is the question of government funding: in the short-term, some OECD countries have put emergency measures in place to financially help the industry. The question is being debated what potential roles government support might take in preserving a diverse and local press without putting its independence at stake.

It includes a comparison of the different measures and levels of support available to media in OECD countries.