However bad things may seem, the news for newspapers is good

As another year looms, I cannot remember such despondency in what used to be called Fleet Street. It is not just that several newspaper groups are losing money: it was ever thus. There is talk of a general decline in newspapers. Some even suggest that the written word — as it appears in a bundle of newsprint delivered to your door or picked up at a newsagent — will not last more than ten or 20 years. We are told that the Internet will tempt more and more readers, and that the young do not have the same interest in newspapers as their parents and grandparents did. The sharpest decline in readership has been in London, where almost every title has suffered, and it is adduced as a warning of what will happen in the rest of the country. In the capital, people are more frantically busy, and more drawn to the Internet and other sources of news.