Fortune favours the brave and the compact revolutionaries

Once a month, on ABC Day, the prophets of doom, iPods in hand, gather in a wireless hotspot to receive and listen to a podcast of the requiem for the newspaper. Their hymn sheets are the dense pages of the Audit Bureau of Circulation's monthly reportand, having studied them, they wail and bow down before the web, whence cometh their help, they believe.

It is not that I am blind to declining newspaper sales. It is happening, but it is neither terminal nor catastrophic. I do find it odd, though, that so many in the communication industry, particularly its print dimension, should think it sensible to spend quite so much time predicting their own demise. Say it often enough and people will believe it. We do not have to sell the death of newspapers in order to promote the growth of online.

So forgive me if I point to one or two encouraging things in the area of the printed word. First, compact newspapers - a matter of some interest to those who publish the paper in which I write. For more than two years after The (daily) Independent broke the mould, until the last transformation, that of The Observer, it was the dominant media story. But then came multi- media convergence, and the newspaper industry preferred not to talk about newspapers.

Of course, the unexpectedly large growth in sales brought about by coming down in size was unlikely to be maintained, but an examination of the figures does indicate a lasting effect, particularly for some titles. A comparison of the sales figures for the compact versions and the broadsheets they replaced reveals the following: The Independent, taking the latest (March) ABC figure, is selling 15.5 per cent more than it did in September 2003, the last true broadsheet month. The Times, which went compact soon after The Independent, is selling almost exactly the same as it did as a broadsheet in October 2003.

It was another two years before the Berliner Guardian appeared. It is selling 3.4 per cent more than its broadsheet counterpart of July 2005. Next to downsize was The Independent on Sunday, selling last month 12.3 per cent more copies than in its last days as a broadsheet. And finally, The Observer is selling 4.3 per cent more copies than it did as a broadsheet in November 2005. The Telegraph titles, which have remained broadsheet, have lost sales over the period since The Independent launched as a compact - the daily 4.1 per cent down, the Sunday 10.5 per cent down.

Now all the quality titles I have mentioned have lost sales year on year to March 2007. But the gain since the compact revolution remains, showing that innovation in the "old and dying" medium can still bring results.

Also encouraging is a survey by the World Editors' Forum. Sponsored by Reuters and the US polling company Zogby, the Newsroom Barometer questioned editors from all over the world and found 85 per cent "very" or "somewhat" optimistic about the future of newspapers. Four out of five thought online/ new media journalism a "welcome addition", and 35 per cent believed print newspapers would remain the primary way for news to be read in 10 years' time.

Nobody's saying, "New/online media, forget it." But they are saying, "Don't forget about print." A lot more of this print may be about views and opinion, as the Independent News & Media chief executive Ivan Fallon told the World Editors' survey. A lot more of it may be free. Last month, thelondonpaper distributed an average of 502,000 copies a day in the capital, while London Lite moved 400,000. Hardly surprising that the paid-for Evening Standard is down 17.8 per cent year on year.

But we'll want to read words on paper for a long time to come. Let's start talking about the media mix, not the death of one of the ingredients.

Peter Cole is professor of journalism at the University of Sheffield