An article in China Daily puts the crisis that print faces in perspective.

A 25 year-old woman the paper interviewed laughed, "Subscribing to a newspaper? Wow, that is my Dad's job." Ren Xin says she reads the news everyday but gets her info online, only very occasionally purchasing a newspaper or magazine for the commute to work.

Ren also enjoyed the interactive features of a Chinese news site, Sina Corp, during the World Cup: "I could find almost everything I needed in the section. Besides, I could write a comment to express my joy or vent my anger."

Traditional news organizations are still top on the Web, due to a law that prohibits most websites from printing news. But that hasn't stopped profits and revenues at the biggest newspapers from falling.

One estimate puts the loss in ad sales in the first half of 2005 at 15% year-on-year. The profit of the highly popular Beijing Youth Daily suffered a 94.8% loss in ad profit in 2005, a loss which its editor-in-chief Tian Kewu admits was caused by the Internet.

Cui Baoguo, professor at Tsinghua University and author of The Blue Book of China's Media said, "Young Chinese are starting to move away from traditional print media as they can now access various new media outlets. And ad agencies have been quick to keep up with the trend."

Tian lamented, "Our digital strategy is starting to pay off. But frankly, we are already late in embracing Internet technology." 

Source: China Daily