Here is the Director’s Cut of my Guardian article celebrating 25 years of their media section with a look at the changing circulation of newspapers and the reasons behind the decline.

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Back in 1984 newspapers were written in Fleet Street, printed on hot metal and bought in their millions. They generally came on broad sheets of inky paper and had the power to crush or create political movements.

Two years later the bitter Wapping Dispute heralded a Golden Age of investment in increased pagination, supplements, magazines, colour and even new titles.

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1986 brought us the varied delights of three new paper launches. The idealistic Independent, the mid-range colour tabloid Today and the sex comic Sunday Sport. Today has gone the way of the short-lived left-wing Sunday Correspondent and Bob Maxwell’s The European. But what is surprising is how all the main daily titles who begun the cash-rich 80s have survived into the much harsher media climate of 2009.

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For some papers the circulation decline has been significant but relatively manageable – so far. The Guardian sold around 500,000 copies 25 years ago. By ’99 it was 400,000 and now 350,000 a day. Compare that fairly gentle descent to the plummeting Daily Mirror which lost a million readers each decade to fall from 3.5 million in ’84 to just 1.3 million today. Just as catastrophic has been the collapse of the Daily Express which used to outsell the Daily Mail. It had 2 million buyers back in ’84, now it struggles to keep 750,000.

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The underlying decline in readership had already set in during the 80s with competition from increasingly attractive television followed in the 1990s by the charms of the Internet. They both took eyeballs from the page to the screen. 

Over the last 25 years newspapers have strained every editorial muscle to reflect people’s richer lifestyles and their more complex work and leisure patterns. Health, arts, travel, food, personal finance, and sports journalism have all expanded massively. But it is precisely the new ways that we work and play that have helped send circulation on a steady downward path. We haven’t got as much time or inclination to read newspapers. We have other choices.

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On top of the failure to hold the reader’s attention has been the loss of advertising. Classified and glossy has largely left the newspages and only a fraction of it is reappearing online. Throw in a global economic recession and you have a recipe for what The Guardian‘s Emily Bell recently called ‘years of carnage’.

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Some newspapers fought the forces of decline more successfully. Rupert Murdoch’s Times actually rebuilt its post-Wapping circulation to a late 90s peak of about 750,000 although that has eased back to just over 600,000 today. The Sun has lost a third falling from 4 million to 3 million but it is still the UK’s best-selling paper. The Daily Mail has also been losing readers in recent years but its current 2.3 million sales figure is actually higher than in 1984.

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These relative successes suggest that a bold and creative editorial package is the best weapon against structural decline. Innovations such as colour photography, tabloid sizing and huge Saturday editions have all created better products.  Yet is it all in vain? Can the Internet Age support newspapers?

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In the last few years British dailies have pioneered online news with The Telegraph‘s 360 degree newsroom, The Guardian‘s 24/7 multi-platform website, and the Daily Mail‘s sensationally successful online show-business coverage. They have found vast new audiences around the world through their websites, but unfortunately they don’t pay per view and online ad revenues are not filling the gap.

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