Between electing a new president, getting on with two wars and holding off economic ruin, this has been a great year for the news and a terrible year for newspapers in the US. The Tribune’s collapse was only the biggest headline in a year when newspapers all over the country folded or laid off (a total of 15,586 journalists).

Of course, India is a long way from that dire eventuality. Despite being temporarily hobbled by the current economic climate, newsprint costs, etc, our print media is one of the few bright spots (along with China and Japan) in the World Association of Newspapers’ (WAN) otherwise wan reports. There are more readers, more journalists and more media outlets than ever. Close to 370 million literate Indians not currently served by any publication are all for the taking. Rising literacy and the “aspirational” associations of newspaper consumption, and pretty dismal levels of Internet use ensure that both regional and English publications can safely expect to be around for a while. But that doesn’t insulate us from the same shocks, delayed as they might be. If anything, it gives Indian media a precious window, for a phase of low-risk experiment.

In much of the world, newspapers have been gently waning in economic health and cultural centrality for years, but now they’re practically convulsing. In the US this year, newspaper stocks fell an average of 83.3 per cent, losing 64.5 billion dollars in market value. The digital onslaught has been exacerbated several times by the recession. Adspends have shrunk, and those there are naturally migrate towards the Web where it is possible to contextualise them to users (giving them a laserlike precision that newspaper ads lack). Whether you’re reading this on paper or screen, you might be one of the thinning tribe of readers staving off the newspaper industry’s slo-mo, but spectacular, slide into oblivion. This particular section of the newspaper — the edit and op-ed pages which curate commentary — has an even harder time proving its utility against a whole avalanche of user-generated and semi-professional content on the Web.

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