BEIJING, April 13 -- Tsinghua University and the Social Science Documentation Publishing House jointly published the "2006 Media Blue Book" in Beijing on April 12th, boldly indicating that taking the year 2005 as a turning point, China's traditional newspaper industry has stopped its constantly rising pace. As its advertising turnover began to drop dramatically by an average margin of over 15%, China's newspaper industry has run into a business crisis.

    The blue book pointed out that after more than ten years of exponential increase, new media represented by the internet has neared a critical point. Internet media will continue to enjoy explosive development in the coming two or three years. In this period, the strong status of the traditional newspaper industry will be fundamentally shaken.

    Since the spring of 2005, advertising turnover of China's major newspapers has begun to drop sharply at an average rate of more than 15%. At the same time, China's online advertising has entered a growth period. The scale of China's online advertising is estimated to reach 4 billion RMB (US$500 million) this year, an increase of nearly 50% over last year.

    As for the declining trend of advertising turnover of China's newspaper industry last year, the blue book analyzed that on the surface, it was a result of China's macro controls, but in fact, it mainly resulted from the impact of new media such as the internet. A deeper cause was the approach of a transition period confronting the newspaper industry.

    (Source: Chinanews.cn)