9 interesting facts about newspapers
- More than 24 billion newspapers are published every year.
- In China, early government-produced news sheets, called tipao, circulated among court officials during the late Han dynasty (second and third centuries AD).
- Newspapers are recycled into a number of products. One of the most common is new newsprint. According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), the
average newspaper contains 30 percent recycled fiber content.
- The first modern newspapers were products of western European countries like Germany (publishing Relation in 1605), France (Gazette in 1631), Belgium (Nieuwe Tijdingen in 1616) and England (the London Gazette, founded in 1665.
- In 2006, the recycling at a rate for newspapers in the U.S. reached 88 percent.
- According to the Guinness Book of Records, the daily circulation of the Soviet newspaper Trud exceeded 21,500,000 in 1990, while the Soviet weekly Argumenty i Fakty boasted the circulation of 33,500,000 in 1991.
- The future of newspapers has been widely debated as the industry has faced down soaring newsprint prices, slumping ad sales, the loss of much classified advertising and precipitous drops in circulation.
- In India, The Times of India is the largest English newspaper, with 2.14 million copies daily.
- In the U.S., the Wall Street Journal has a daily circulation of approximately 2.01 million, making it the most widely distributed paper in the country.
