Advertisers in many markets are spending less on print advertising than they are on other media. In the United States, for example, the growth of print advertising is being outstrip-ped by the growth of radio and television advertising, direct mail, and even the Yellow Pages. In Western countries as a whole, newspapers are losing almost half a percentage point of market share a year.

People in the newspaper industry are fully aware of certain realities. Consolidation and the effectiveness of television have reduced advertisers’ interest in print advertising. Such superstores as Wal-Mart and The Home Depot in the United States or Casino in France advertise less than traditional retailers do. Direct mail gets a great deal of the money that used to go to print. Those advertisers still committed to it have found that they can achieve the same effect by purchasing less space in a more focused fashion. And classified advertising in general now faces intensifying competition from specialized media and from the Internet.

Many people in the industry accept these conditions as unalterable macroeconomic laws dooming newspapers to a slow decline. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Take the experience of one US daily newspaper, which we...