PARIS - The coronavirus crisis has weighed heavily on print newspapers already battling for survival around the world, with the number of copies sold tumbling while less profitable digital readerships surge.
Simply delivering printed papers to the shops -- or having customers come in to buy them -- has become a challenge, worsening a years-long decline in sales and advertising revenue.
"Consumption of printed newspapers has fallen as lockdowns undermine physical distribution, almost certainly accelerating the shift to an all-digital future," the Reuters Institute's 2020 annual report said.
Major dailies in Brazil and Mexico have already switched to online-only or dropped some days' editions, while in the Philippines 10 of the 70 newspapers in the PPI association have shuttered.
"Times are hard. There are no advertisers and no-one is reading us," PPI executive director Ariel Sebellino told AFP.
The archipelago nation's small local newspapers were hardest hit during lockdown as street sales tumbled.
"The industry is under siege and we've all taken bruises," Sebellino said.
Far from affecting only journalists, the disappearance of print papers deals out pain all up the production chain, taking in printers, paper makers and delivery people.
Major British media brands could boast of 6.6 million new online readers in the first quarter in what their industry association said was a new record.
But most have not seen the same bounce in print sales.
The coronavirus has become "the greatest threat to the global news industry since the 2008 economic crash" wrote industry publication Press Gazette -- which itself moved online-only in 2013.
Between 2005 and 2018, some 250 local papers closed across Britain, while today one in three journalists' jobs are believed to be under threat.
Fond memory
The picture is similar in the US, where dozens of papers have closed or merged with local competitors since the crisis.
Between 2008 and 2019, half of all workers in American newspapers lost their jobs, according to a Pew institute count.
Around the world, audiences have melted away for the free sheets once handed out in busy urban centres.
Unable to count on funding from advertisers, some have paused publication, including Metro or Destak in Brazil or France's 20 Minutes.
With its ageing population used to holding a paper in their hands, Germany's newspaper publishers "were all making money before the coronavirus crisis, even if circulation figures kept falling," said Frank Ueberall, president of the DJV journalists' federation.
"Things are different now," but "text journalism still has good days ahead," Ueberall said.
"Old people in particular are far from adopting digital technologies en masse."
"Printing is expensive, but it's swings and roundabouts," said Gilles Dechamps, head of a printing company in northern Paris, arguing that "it's important for readers and for advertisers to have the landmark" of a printed paper".
Despite efforts like cutting their size to save paper or investing in the web over the past 30 years, few papers have found the winning formula to make money from 21st-Century journalism.
"Even in the smallest markets, Facebook and Google syphon three-quarters of the digital revenue," said Penelope Abernathy, a former Wall Street Journal and New York Times vice-president who now teaches media economics at the University of North Carolina.
"That leaves all other legacy media fighting for the digital scraps."
Strong brands like the NYT may survive the transition, with the Grey Lady's digital revenues outstripping paper for the first time in the second quarter this year.
But the smaller fish may have to continue reducing their output and hiking prices to survive, with successful new magazine launches in recent years mostly targeting a niche audience.
"Print will survive in some form," Abernathy predicted, although likely more in weekly and monthly options than daily.
"The era of the print daily will be remembered fondly. The whole notion was capturing the history of the last 24 hours," she said.
Agence France-Presse
SINGAPORE - Singapore will see three-quarters of its economy resume normal operations when curbs to fight the coronavirus are eased from June 2, although the relaxing of measures will likely see a rise in daily cases, its government said on Tuesday.
Businesses that operate in settings with lower transmission risks may resume activities, such as those in manufacturing, finance, insurance and wholesale trade.
A third of the workforce will resume on-site operations, while the remainder would work from home, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing told a news conference.
The plan is the first phase of lifting of Singapore's so-called "circuit breaker" restrictions to stem the spread of the coronavirus, which expire on June 1.
"This will be done in phases to reduce the risk of a second wave of cases of infections, as many countries have experienced, after they lifted their control measures," Health Minister Gan Kim Yong told the same briefing.
"As we begin to resume more activities, we do expect to see a rise in daily new cases."
Schools will also start reopening in the city-state from next month.
Singapore reported 451 new cases on Tuesday, taking the total to 28,794 infections - among the most in Asia, mainly due to outbreaks in cramped migrant-worker dormitories. It has managed to control the spread among locals outside of the dormitories.
Many restrictions will remain, however, including those on gatherings and socializing. Authorities will decide later on the second phase of easing, which could see dine-in restaurants and retail stores reopen.
The government wants to ease measures gradually until Singapore reaches a "new normal" where most activities can resume, but with limitations until an effective vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 is available.
The finance minister will next week announce more support for businesses unable to open on June 2. (Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan; Editing by Martin Petty)
-reuters-
HONG KONG - Hong Kong suffered its worst quarterly contraction since modern records began, official figures showed Monday, as the coronavirus outbreak hammered an economy already mired in recession from political unrest and trade war woes.
The financial hub is now experiencing its third-straight quarter of negative growth -- its longest financial downturn since the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash.
Months of debilitating street protests and the tit-for-tat tariff battle between Washington and Beijing had weighed on the local economy for months before the pandemic helped push the city deeper into recession.
Advance figures released Monday showed an 8.9 percent on-year contraction in the first quarter -- the worst decline since the government began compiling data in 1974.
The result was a bigger fall than the 8.3 percent recorded during the Asian financial crisis in 1998 and the 7.8 percent seen in early 2009.
"Faced with a collapse in global demand, Hong Kong's small, open economy is taking a severe hit," Bloomberg Intelligence economist Qian Wan said in a note to clients ahead of the results.
The figures were worse than most projections, even though the city has made impressive headway against the coronavirus outbreak.
Despite its proximity and links with the Chinese mainland, confirmed infections have been kept to around 1,000 with just six deaths.
The financial hub has managed to largely end local transmissions of the disease, with almost all new cases coming from people returning to the city from overseas who are quickly quarantined.
Officials are beginning to ease some social distancing measures, in a move that will boost the local economy.
But in an international finance hub so dependent on the rest of the world, plenty of headwinds remain as the coronavirus continues to wreak economic chaos elsewhere.
"Even if there is improvement, it will be gradual and small," said financial secretary Paul Chan, who estimates the economy will contract between four to seven percent this year.
There is also little sign of an end to the political uncertainty hanging over Hong Kong in the aftermath of last year's civil unrest.
Despite vowing to heal divides at the start of the year, the city's government has not unveiled any policies aimed at reconciliation, while Beijing has ramped up its rhetoric against the local pro-democracy movement.
There has also been little mood for compromise among protesters who largely organise online and the few figures from the movement with a public profile are now being prosecuted.
As a result, political tensions are rising just as the city moves towards ending some anti-virus movement restrictions.
In the last fortnight small protests have begun bubbling up again after four months of comparative clam imposed by the pandemic.
More global economic damage from the virus and a resurgence of local unrest would both result in "major downside risks" to Hong Kong's economy, said Oxford Economics senior economist Tommy Wu.
Agence France-Presse
The UN rights chief warned Monday that countries flouting the rule of law in the name of fighting the novel coronavirus pandemic risk sparking a "human rights disaster".
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet called on countries to refrain from violating fundamental rights "under the guise of exceptional or emergency measures."
"Emergency powers should not be a weapon governments can wield to quash dissent, control the population, and even perpetuate their time in power," she warned in a statement.
"They should be used to cope effectively with the pandemic –- nothing more, nothing less."
Her comments came after more than 200,000 people have perished in the pandemic and nearly three million have been infected worldwide by the novel coronavirus since it surfaced in China late last year.
Bachelet acknowledged that states have the right to restrict some rights to protect public health, but she insisted that any restrictions should be necessary, proportionate and non-discriminatory, and also limited in duration.
"There have been numerous reports from different regions that police and other security forces have been using excessive, and at times lethal, force to make people abide by lockdowns and curfews," she said, lamenting that "such violations have often been committed against people belonging to the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the population."
"Shooting, detaining, or abusing someone for breaking a curfew because they are desperately searching for food is clearly an unacceptable and unlawful response.
"So is making it difficult or dangerous for a woman to get to hospital to give birth."
- 'Incalculable damage' -
"In some cases, people are dying because of the inappropriate application of measures that have been supposedly put in place to save them," Bachelet said.
She also decried the mass arrests in some countries over curfew violations as "both unnecessary and unsafe."
"Jails and prisons are high risk environments, and states should focus on releasing whoever can be safely released, not detaining more people."
The UN rights chief also warned that efforts to rein in dangerous misinformation around the pandemic was in some cases being used as an excuse to crack down on legitimate free speech.
"It is important to counter misinformation, but shutting down the free exchange of ideas and information not only violates rights, it undermines trust," she said.
"Undermining rights such as freedom of expression may do incalculable damage to the effort to contain COVID-19 and its pernicious socioeconomic side-effects," she warned.
Bachelet also insisted that any exceptional measures or state of emergencies introduced in the name of fighting COVID-19 should be subject to proper parliamentary, judicial and public oversight to avoid abuses.
"If the rule of law is not upheld, then the public health emergency risks becoming a human rights disaster, with negative effects that will long outlast the pandemic itself," she said.
Agence France-Presse
SINGAPORE - Brent crude plunged more than 12 percent to below $17 a barrel Wednesday while US oil erased early gains and fell, as the coronavirus strangles demand and ravages energy markets, while storage facilities approach full capacity.
In another day of volatile trading, US benchmark WTI surged in early Asian deals while Brent also edged up on news that top producers had held talks -- only for prices to suddenly change course.
Brent dropped 12.31 percent to $16.98 a barrel, extending heavy losses from a day earlier.
WTI for June delivery, which had rebounded about 20 percent at the open, was down around five percent at $11 a barrel in the afternoon.
On Monday, WTI for May delivery collapsed to an unprecedented low of minus $40.32 as traders scrambled to sell it before the contract expired Tuesday, but could find few buyers with storage capacity fast filling up.
The negative prices meant that traders were forced to pay to have the crude taken off their hands.
Analysts said the morning bounce was driven by news that members of exporting group OPEC, as well as some allies in the OPEC+ grouping, held a teleconference Tuesday -- but grim reality soon returned to the markets.
Prices have plunged as lockdowns and travel restrictions introduced worldwide to stem the spread of the virus hammer demand, and observers believe there is little way out for oil except bringing an end to the pandemic.
"The overtly bearish sentiment may well keep prices suppressed in the near-term until we find the light at the end of the tunnel with progressive resumption of halted economic activities across the globe," said Jingyi Pan, a market strategist with IG.
US crude has been particularly hard-hit because of storage problems, as WTI is delivered at a single, inland point, although the sell-off has now spread to Brent.
The crisis was worsened by a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. They drew a line under the dispute earlier this month and, along with other top producers, agreed to slash output by almost 10 million barrels a day to shore up virus-hit markets.
But that has had little effect, with prices continuing to plummet, as analysts predict it will not make up for the massive hit to demand.
Agence France-Presse
