Lebanese Newspapers Are Dying Too..

The Daily Star:

Nabil Dajani, a professor of media studies at the American University of Beirut and an expert on the Arab media, believes that the highest selling Lebanese newspaper sells no more than 10,000 copies on its best day, with an average of 7,000–8,000 per day. Before the Civil War, Dajani says that a single paper could easily sell 60,000–70,000 copies in a day.

What I still find odd is the amount of importance politicians still place on newspapers. If you’re a news junkie like me, you’ll notice that most of the juicy scoops and exclusives still go to Annahar and Al-Akhbar.

Mr. Dajani understates the importance of the internet in this but I think he’s wrong. Most of the people I know have stopped reading newspapers and are opting instead for online news sources. And this is still the beginning, wait to see what happens when (if?) the internet becomes fast, cheap and ubiquitous.

And finally, no, the irony that this blog post started with a quote from a newspaper is not lost on me..