Western print media has witnessed a marked decline in news consumption and circulation. Bucking global trends, print media in India has continued to grow.[i] Kerala is an exemplar in this regard, especially with regard to news consumption, awareness and political consciousness. This essay tries to explain some of the reasons behind this global decline and the simultaneous rise in news consumption in India and in Kerala. This will be followed by a second piece that looks at how technology, political events and specific cultures of readership play a role in the growth and persistence of print media.

 Global Decline in Print Media: Circulation and Consumption

From the mid-1990s onwards, Western media had witnessed a drastic decline in news consumption in general and print media in specific. In the United States, weekday print circulation (not readership) has shrunk from 60 million in 1994 to 35 million combined print and digital circulation in 2018. Britain seems to have followed suit. In Britain, newspapers have declined in circulation steadily by 6 to 10 per cent annually since 2005, and no less than 200 local and regional titles have disappeared or stopped publication over this period. This disappearing trend has caused so much concern that former Prime Minister Theresa May had described it as a “danger to democracy” (Singh, 2019).

Indian Print Media: Defying Global Trends of Declining Readership

Whereas circulation figures for print publications have declined in most developed markets, the Indian case demonstrates a rather unusual spike (Audit Bureau of Circulations Report (ABCR), 2017). As per ABCR figures, the average number of print media publication copies in India has gone up by 2.37 crore between 2006 and 2016 (ABCR, 2017). This demonstrates an average rise from 3.91 crores in 2006 to 6.28 crore copies per day in 2016.

The ABCR has corroborated these findings with “a statement that the print medium in India “is thriving, growing, and expanding” despite “stiff competition” from television, radio and digital industries” (Audit Bureau of Circulations Report, 2017). The ABCR figures further demonstrate that Indian languages have largely stimulated this growth in print media.

While Hindi grew the fastest (CAGR[ii] 8.76%) between 2006-16, Telugu (8.28%), Kannada (6.40%), Tamil (5.51%) and Malayalam (4.11%) followed close on its heels. English publications, on the contrary, demonstrated a below-average growth in the same decade, at merely 2.87 % (ABCR, 2017). India, therefore, appears to have defied the global trend of declining print media readership (Zehra, 2017).

In his piece, “The Last Bastion of a Profitable Press” (2017), parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor concurs with this assessment and says,

Newspaper circulation in India has grown from 39.1 million copies in 2006 to 62.8 million in 2016 – a 60 per cent increase. Comparable data for the most recent year available, 2015, show that while newspaper circulation grew by 12 per cent in India, it fell in almost every other major media market: by 12 per cent in the UK, 7 per cent in the US and 3 per cent in Germany and France (Zehra, 2017).

Some reasons behind this trend can be attributed to rising literacy levels and disposable incomes witnessed in the past two decades and the apparent credibility of the printed word (Zehra, 2017). In this regard, media commentator Vinita Kohli-Khandekar observes:

Print media has always performed well in India. There are two main reasons for it – the primacy of the written word and the home delivery of the newspaper. In their physical form, newspapers started declining in the West because volition was involved – you have to go to a newsstand and buy a copy. In India, we get it at our doorstep (Zehra, 2017).

Up until the early 21st century, despite the global decline of print media, India witnessed the rise of enormous media empires. While their English publications and channels led many, what was remarkable was the growth of media in 21 officially recognized languages (Pande, 2020). English newspapers used to dominate the market in the 1960s. Hindi and Tamil newspapers used to occupy the second and third positions, respectively. However, things started changing radically after the 1990s (Zehra, 2017).

The growth in circulation of Hindi dailies has been as swift as the rise in literacy levels in predominantly Hindi speaking states. While literacy rates have gone up from 52 to 74 per cent (a growth of 42 per cent) at the national level between 1991 and 2011, the rise has been rather swift – from 42 to 69 per cent, which means a growth of 65 per cent – in Empowered Action Group (EAG) states[iii] (Zehra, 2017).

Shashi Tharoor identifies India’s growing literacy rate (79 %) as a fundamental reason behind a thriving newspaper market. This positive shift can be largely attributed to improvements in literacy rates in the northern states and the Hindi speaking heartland. The present situation was in marked contrast to the 1960s when Hindi speakers were largely less literate in comparison to readers of English, Malayalam, and Bengali newspapers, owing to which Hindi newspapers had low circulations (Tharoor, 2017). In the present, however, they are leading for the second decade in a row, “Hindi newspapers experienced the fastest growth, with average circulation soaring at a compounded annual growth rate of 8.78% since 2006” (Tharoor, 2017).

While Tharoor doesn’t hold the opinion that this trend will last forever, he also doesn’t think that print media in India runs a serious risk of becoming financially unviable for now, either (Tharoor, 2017). As per ABCR predictions, print and digital media advertising revenues are likely to even out by 2021. But even then, he believes that print media in India will be much better placed than the West, at least as far as advertising revenue is concerned. The current figures justify that print media will continue to thrive in India (Tharoor, 2017). In this regard, he says,

India now has the world’s largest number of paid newspapers, and the number continues to grow, from 5,767 in 2013 to 7,871 in 2015. Over those same two years, 50 newspapers ceased publication in the US, which has less than a quarter of India’s print papers (Tharoor, 2017).

Kerala: An Exemplar in Readership, Public Awareness & News Consumption

“The Indian Readership Survey (IRS) report of 2017 shows that newspapers reach 59.73% of the people in Kerala, compared to the national average of about 16.55%” (Cris, 2018). Media veteran, Sashi Kumar Menon, concurs:

Kerala has always been a news-driven State. News awareness is very high. Reasons are literacy, the old history of being aware of issues, enlightened public, a very good education system. As far as consumption of news goes, this must be the state that records the best performance in India (Cris, 2018).

Thus, newspaper reading is seen as second nature to a Malayali. Despite the dumbing down and tabloidization rampant in print media, print continues to supersede visual media, at least as far as gravitas is concerned.

References:

Cris. (2018, June 17). Why Kerala loves its newspaper so much. The News Minute. https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/why-kerala-loves-its-newspaper-so-much-83193

Pande, Mrinal. (2020, May.10). Print media: Chronicle of a death foretold. National Herald. https://www.nationalheraldindia.com/india/print-media-chronicle-of-a-death-foretold

Singh, Gurbir. (2019, May.12). Never-say-die print media continues to surprise. The New Indian Express. https://www.newindianexpress.com/business/2019/may/12/never-say-die-print-media-continues-to-surprise-1975791.html

Tharoor, Shashi (2017, May 24). There’s one country in the world where the newspaper industry is still thriving. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/05/despite-the-decline-of-printed-papers-theres-one-place-that-is-bucking-the-trend/

Zehra, Rosheena. (2017, May 27). Print Media Is Still Thriving in India and Here Is Why. The Quint.  https://www.thequint.com/news/india/rise-of-print-media-in-india

[i] https://doingsociology.org/2021/04/04/indian-news-media-its-changing-business-models-devanjan-khuntia/, accessed on 24^th August 2020.

[ii] CAGR- Compound Annual Growth Rate.

[iii] Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan and Odisha form the EAG states (Zehra, 2017).

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Anna Zacharias is a PhD student in the Centre for the Study of Social Systems (CSSS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.