The rising cost of newsprint was also a major obstacle which had led to drop in profitability, he said. While this impacted the business of a newspaper, it could also reflect on the right to free expression, he added. However, inspite of the growth in other media (electronic and Internet) and now radio (with FM coming in), in absolute terms the circulation of newspapers had not significantly dropped and regional publications had in fact picked up, the minister said. "Content is now technology driven, and more people across the country are taking to gathering as much information as possible, which is evident from the rise in the number of pink papers in the country," he said.

Local news coverage was of key importance for newspapers to look into and the tendency to have too many newspapers, each wanting to do something different needed to be balanced out, he added. Delivering the keynote address, the president of the World Association of Newspapers, Roger Parkinson said the Internet was more a threat to television than to newspapers and the new wave of free newspapers in the US/UK/Canada was in fact driving more people to take to reading print. Most newspapers also had their Websites containing news content and this combination was proving to be extremely effective and mutually beneficial to each other, Mr Parkinson said.

"This is a period of renaissance for the print medium and the growth of the Internet was a wake-up call for the segment. Newspapers have now affirmed that content is the single greatest asset for the publication and they must therefore cater to reader preferences and specific market requirement," he said. World over, surveys have also shown an increase in young readership levels and newspaper's advertising incomes have also gone up. However pricing issues and anti-trust laws which covered the print media in some countries, needed to be looked into, Mr Parkinson said.