Newspapers in Asia Are Doing Fine

This is an excerpt. To read the entire article, click here.

There's a motorcycle-taxi stand near my home in Bangkok, and many of the drivers' hands are dirty. Not from urban grime or motor oil, but from newsprint. Fueled by a growing literacy rate and press reforms in some parts of the continent, Asia is enjoying what may be the world's last great newspaper boom.

Eight of the world's 10 biggest paid-for daily newspapers are printed in Asia, according to the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). The largest national newspaper markets? China, India and Japan. (The U.S. is a distant fourth.)

Even as Europeans and North Americans abandon their paid subscriptions — newspaper circulation contracted by 1.84% and 2.14% respectively in 2006-07, according to WAN's most recent figures — Asia's grew by 4.74%. In India alone, 11.5 million new newspaper readers were added in 2008, and ad growth is chugging along at around 10% —less robust than over the past two years but still remarkably strong.

"Many people can't enjoy their morning cup of tea without their newspaper," says Rahul Kansal, chief marketing officer for the Times of India, the world's most read English-language broadsheet and a major player among a whopping 64,998 newspapers registered across India.