Coming back from vacation on Monday, I found out about the circulation numbers in 2002 for the main newspapers that are distributed nationwide. Even in a year full of relevant events (war on terrorism, soccer World Cup and Brazilian presidential elections), a trend of falling circulation has remained in effect since 1998.
Its not my intention to lament the fact; rather, I seek to understand at least some causes of this decline and what it means.
The graphic above, with the average annual circulation of Folha, Estado de So Paulo, and the Rio daily O Globo since 1984, shows how the curves of their evolution were similar, especially in the 1990s. Its obvious that the peak was in 1994 and 1995, when Folha, for example, had an average circulation of 606,000 copies per day.
Those were the years in which numerous promotions were held newspapers included atlases, encyclopedias, fascicles, dictionaries with aggressive marketing to conquer new readers. Such a strategy was based on the idea that in a highly competitive market whenever newspapers increase circulation, the more advertising they attract on their pages and, in effect, earn more money.
These trends were influenced by the Real Plan, which momentously made possible a higher capacity for consumption by significant portions of the population and brought down the value of the U.S. dollar (the currency upon which newsprint prices are based) relative to the real.
It was also in this period that the main media groups, largely sustained by loans obtained overseas at favorable exchange rates, invested in new printing presses, increased business (cable TV, Internet) and even launched new print publications.
In the history of journalism, however, higher circulation is not always synonymous with a solid business. This reality was proved starting in 1998, when negative signs began to appear as the value of the real began to wear down.
The dollar rose. With it, debts began to rise (some literally in the billions) along with the price of newsprint. The income of the population, in general, began to decline.
Spending on advertising declined as news organizations drained their marketing budgets. Promotional ideas ran out (there is a shelf for every encyclopedia, atlas, dictionary, etc.).
The priority went from circulation to profitability: sales are less, but with better economic health. Creating legislation to allow the entry of foreign capital in the media related to this focus on performance.
Artificial
For Otavio Frias Filho, Folhas editor in chief, the growth in the middle of the 1990s was, in large part, artificial.
The biggest portion of people who bought newspapers in the cycle of free inserts were not captivated by the journalistic product itself, Frias Filho said. I fear that the retention of this contingent of readers (once the promotions were over) would have been impressive only if the newspapers fought to distort their editorial profile, giving bigger emphasis to popular topics to the detriment of political-institutional and macroeconomic coverage, for example.
In the opinion of Rodolfo Fernandes, editor in chief at O Globo, the decline in income by the population is a prime factor. The following years of low economic growth after the boom of 1994-95 made the newspaper an expensive product for an important segment of readers, he said. If we didnt work with this concept, we would have to believe that all the newspapers were really bad and that other media were much better a hypothesis with which I strongly disagree.
Quality
Today, after the cycle of free inserts has passed, the proportion of subscribers and readers who buy individual copies has changed. According to the National Newspaper Association, 590f the copies sold by the 74 newspapers audited in the country are to subscribers, a percentage that is higher for the media with which this column deals (at Folha, for example, it is 80 to 90%).
The fluctuation of sales represented by readers who bought these newspapers on the newsstand attracted by a strong headline, for example thus has become almost irrelevant in statistical terms.
This is where the responsibilities of newsrooms and journalists come in. In this new situation in which more selectivity in the composition of its public seems to be consolidated higher quality of journalistic content becomes a decisive factor to maintain the current readers and to conquer new ones.
Kidnaping sequestered
Fridays newspapers, except Folha, reported the end of the kidnaping in So Paulo of three children of an executive at an important news organization the previous evening. The news was reported on a broadcast Thursday night and reported afterward on the Internet, including Folhas on-line service.
Agora, published by the same group that owns Folha, put the story on the front page, without mentioning any names of those involved, clarifying that this treatment was due to a request by the family for security reasons. Other newspapers reported the names.
Folha has a clear policy concerning kidnapings in progress: find out, but do not report anything without the familys approval. When it ends, the newspaper publishes everything that it learned.
Questioned about the reason why the newspaper didnt report the release of the children on Friday (the material came out in yesterdays edition, strangely, within a story whose headline told about kidnapings of children in general), the managing editors office asserted that the newsroom did not manage to contact the executive, someone in the family or someone at the company on Thursday night; and that state security officials said that the family did not authorize the release of information. It would appear that in these circumstances, the newspaper followed its stylebook by leaving out the information.
The case is sensitive, but I believe that this interpretation is debatable. The case has ended, the ransom was paid and the children were freed. There was no kidnaping in progress. More appropriate, considering the questions about security and the limitations on gathering information, it seems to have been the attitude of Agora to at least not leave readers with no information at all.
Numbers helped
The final numbers on readers helped by the ombudsman last year showed a slight decline (4.6%) in relation to the total number of contacts in 2001. They totaled 7,845 in 2002 compared with 8,228 the previous year.
Naturally, comments about national news were the biggest items, with 1,298 messages (16.50f the total), due to the elections.
The same motive sustained the higher number (678) of messages, also, related to columnists at the newspaper. There were two peak times: May and June, because of the World Cup; and September and October, due to the elections.
The daily average (counting only work days) of messages to the department fell from 33 to 31.8 contacts.
