20 June 2004


BBC NEWS | Technology | Online newspapers tempt readers
: "Online newspapers tempt readers

Peter Feuilherade
BBC Monitoring staff in Istanbul

In Russia newspaper circulation has doubled in two years

The number of newspaper websites around the world has doubled since 1999, a study has found.

There has been a tremendous boom in the consumption of online editions.

Timothy Balding, director general of World Association of Newspapers said web audiences for newspapers have grown by 350% over the last five years.

He was addressing editors and executives from hundreds of newspapers who are meeting for the society's annual congress in Istanbul this week.

Global circulation

The past year was a challenging one for the world's newspapers, said Mr Balding.

Total global circulation was down slightly for the year in the 208 countries surveyed by the Paris-based association, which represents 18,000 newspapers.

But over the last five years, newspaper sales worldwide went up by 4.75%.

NEWSPAPER CIRCULATION
China: 85 million
India: 72 million
Japan: 70 million
USA: 55 million

Well over one billion people now read a newspaper every day.

Europeans are buying fewer newspapers. Circulation fell in 13 of the 15 'old' European Union countries, excluding the new members who joined in May. The biggest drop was in Ireland, followed by the UK.

But although sales have declined in many mature markets, some developing markets are still strong. Newspaper sales were up by over 4% in China, the world's biggest market, and by an impressive 9% in India.

China has the largest total daily circulation of any country in the world, with more than 85 million copies sold, followed by India, Japan and the USA.

In Russia, the number of dailies published has almost doubled in two years.

The growth in new free commuter dailies is also expanding the reach of the written press to a younger generation, said the association's Timothy Balding.

The number of free dailies has shot up, with a 16% increase in 2003 from a year earlier, and a 24% increase in the past five years in countries for which data exists.

Spending on ads

Newspaper advertising revenues increased globally by a modest 2% last year.

In China, they were up by more than 11%. Newspapers' share of the world media advertising pie fell.

But they are still the second largest advertising medium, after television, which took 38% of global media ad-spend in 2003.

The rapid growth of broadband in many countries means people are spending less of their leisure time watching television, preferring to surf the web instead.

This led to more visits to newspaper web sites, according to research by the World Association of Newspapers and ZenithOptimedia presented at the Istanbul gathering.

The migration of classified advertising from the print media to the web continues slowly. Currently, just over 2% of newspaper ad revenues comes from the web.

Challenges

The combination of financial constraints, falling circulation, ceaseless technological change and the need to redefine relations with readers pose a threat to the press worldwide, according to the association.

Picking out some future trends for the newspaper industry, Timothy Balding predicted more colour, new editorial concepts, and experiments in new formats and design.

In their fight to maintain or boost circulation, many broadsheet papers have shown a resurgence of interest in the tabloid format. At least 20 of the world's respected broadsheets have made the move to tabloid.

The digital revolution is constantly changing the ways in which newspapers collect, produce and distribute information.

For editors and journalists, the challenge is to identify what aspects of this revolution they should invest in, and what is potentially dangerous for the profession, speakers at the WAN congress agreed."

10 June 2004

British women fed up with 'dull and gruelling' lifestyles - World - www.smh.com.au: "June 10, 2004 - 1:41PM

More than half of the women in Britain are fed up with their dull treadmill lifestyles, a new survey has found - and 40 per cent would rather live abroad in dream locations such as Australia.

The Female Lifestyle Survey of Great Britain 2004, released today, said 81 per cent wanted to escape punishing work and household roles with spiralling debts, rubbish sex and social lives and the pressures of having a perfect body.

Health magazine Top Sante reported that 67% of the 2,000 women polled felt they were on a treadmill and 60% thought life was easier for men.

The experience of a mundane and tiring existence was driving women to hit the bottle and raid the fridge in an attempt to de-stress: 59% admitted to drinking alcohol and 74% confessed to comfort eating to relax and unwind.

Nine out of 10 women who work full-time said they still do most of the household chores and 77% said they take the lion's share of responsibility for looking after the children.
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Six out of 10 (59%) blamed a poor sex life for making them miserable while a similar number (58%) cited an unfulfilling social life.

Lack of cash is another issue with 78 per cent saying they find life in Britain financially draining, 52% saying their finances are haphazard or out of control, 49% admitting they spend more than they earn and 55% who are saddled with credit card debts.

In fact more than four in 10 women (44%) are so fed up with life in Britain they would rather live abroad. The top 10 dream boltholes were Australia, Spain, America, France, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus.

One of the top causes of the female blues, according to the poll, was the quest for a perfect body.

Nine out of 10 surveyed said they were unhappy with their looks and 85% of women said they thought about their size and shape every day.

Three-quarters of women thought their life would be better if they were happy with their body and 26% said they were prepared to go under the knife to improve their looks.

Cosmetic procedures women were most likely to have, were breast enlargement, breast reduction, botox injections, liposuction, tightening of the jaw line, tummy tuck, lines around the eyes and a half face lift.

Celebrity role models Victoria Beckham, Jordan and Cherie Blair were the most disliked and were not helpful to ordinary women, 56% said.

The perfect woman was identified as having the face and breasts of Catherine Zeta Jones, the hair of former Friends star Jennifer Aniston, Kylie Minogue's bottom and Victoria Beckham's legs.

Other female headaches revealed in the poll included irritation at the cost of housing (77%), the level of violent crime (71%), the state of the National Health Service (60%) long working hours (51%), the climate (48%), the quality of education (37%), the sex-soaked society (33%) and status anxiety (37%)."

07 June 2004

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04 June 2004

The partner shuffle - National - www.smh.com.au: "The partner shuffle

By Lisa Pryor
June 4, 2004

In today's throwaway society get ready for the throwaway household.

Increasingly, Australians are setting up home not once, but several times in a lifetime, and will be doing a lot more of it in the future, Bernard Salt, a demographer, forecasts.

'I speculate that by 2050 we will have three partners in life, like we have three jobs,' Mr Salt said. 'It prompts the demand for household goods because with every change there's this tendency to say, 'I had that bedroom suite when I was with so-and-so. I don't want it any more - it reminds me of him.''

Mr Salt, a director of property at KPMG, believes Australians will start out with a 'fun' relationship in their early 20s, someone 'for travelling, for fun, for sex'.

Then will come the 'building' relationship, with marriage, mortgage and children, in the early 30s. Then comes the 'wind-down', when we find a soulmate to share a sea change.

At the heart of this shift was the rising spending power, confidence and independence of women who were marrying later than ever, Mr Salt told a Mortgage Industry Association of Australia conference yesterday.

'The reason why she is getting married later is because of a value shift,' Mr Salt said. 'She wants tertiary education, she wants to pay off HECS, travel overseas, establish and develop a career.

'She trials a number of relationships throughout her 20s then commits to marriage at 29, mortgage at 30 and children, perhaps, at 31 or indeed any time over the following decade.'

But the director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University, Bob Birrell, paints a different picture of women moving from relationship to relationship.

It was women without a tertiary education who were most likely to experience marriage breakdown, he said. One reason was that they were more likely to be married to men who were employed casually or part-time, causing economic stress.

'For degree-qualified women, the rate of marital breakdown has actually stabilised over the last few years,' Dr Birrell said.


Mr Salt attributed the tendency to delay marriage to the culture espoused by Friends, the US TV comedy about a group of young people sharing a flat in Greenwich Village, New York.

That culture had been embraced by a young, urban, chic generation in areas such as South Sydney, Chapel Street in Melbourne, and Fortitude Valley in Brisbane.

Like the location of Friends, South Sydney had a high proportion of women aged 25 to 34 who had never married - 69 per cent - compared with 40 per cent for the rest of Sydney. In Greenwich Village the figure is 70 per cent, according to the US 2000 census.

This group would drive demand for an inner-city lifestyle, Mr Salt said.

'If you don't have a mortgage until 30, you need to be within a $15 cab fare of all the hottest clubs in the inner-city.'"