The paper crisis

Which is the fate of the Croatian press? This question was being debated at yesterday's round table conference on the future of Croatian newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. The media landscape in Croatia is not very diverse anyway, and newspapers are being hard hit by the economic crisis. Newspaper sales went down by 20 to 40 percent and advertising revenue with 30 percent.
One of the participants of the conference was Večernji list. In an article about the meeting it writes: "Although the facts indicate that the sale of newspaper copies is in decline, those present rejected the possibility that the press will disappear."
What I find most interesting is the word "facts". As a matter of truth, we know preciously little about the facts. For example, there are no data available on newspaper circulation and sales. We have no idea how many copies a paper like Jutarnji list or Vjesnik sells on average per day. A public opinion poll, done by Mediapuls, produced incredible statistics about newspapers and their readers in Croatia. Of all Croats 63 percent daily read a newspaper. What is most surprising is that these are not the pensioners that make up a large part of Croatia's population. An amazing 72 percent of young people, age 15 to 19, read a paper every day.
There are no official data to prove this poll wrong. But my gut feeling says it is wrong. I don't believe that more than two million Croats spend a euro per day on newspapers. I hardly see people reading newspapers in the tram and not a single family in my sizable apartment block is subscribed to a paper. Not even the National and Scientific Library in Zagreb is a subscriber! Can you image the British Library or the Library of Congress without a single newspaper?
I would not mind if some papers disappeared. Croatia's biggest paper, 24Sata, writes mostly about fun and sex, gossip, celebrities and "black chronicles" - murder, rape, corruption, you name it.
I am rather pessimistic by nature, but I do think that, also in Croatia, their is a market for a serious, non-aligned, internationally oriented newspaper. Or maybe a regional newspaper, if that would boost sales. That has nothing to do with "jugonostalgija" (Slobodna Dalmacija, for example, has a page on Bosnia). Serbia's Politika issues a regional edition, but unfortunately it is printed in Cyrillic only.
If you have data about newspaper sales and the media landscape in Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia or Montenegro, former Yugoslavia, the Western Balkans, South Eastern Europe, this part of Europe or what ever you want to call this region, please comment below.