Obama mastheads

Count on a watershed to bring people, millions of them, back to the old media. Barack Obama8217;s historic win was just such an excuse for major papers and magazines in the US to order additional print runs as they kept selling after election night. Obama8217;s feat has even prompted a spoof of The New York Times, announcing the end of the Iraq war, which for a few minutes had some readers wonder if the great liberal utopia had finally landed on Ellis Island. One landmark event, and the print paper seems to have recovered lost ground.

Both Time magazine and Newsweek rushed back to the press after ordering more than 100,000 extra copies of their special issues. The Washington Post boosted its normal print run by 30 per cent and ordered an extra 250,000 copies of its special edition. The Times hiked the normal run by 35 per cent but went on to print an additional 75,000 copies; Chicago Tribune followed suit with a second run of 120,000 copies to pacify the crowd milling around its lobby. Such crowds everywhere seemed unanimous in their objective: to get something tangible to pass on to their 8220;grandchildren8221; to remember this historic moment by. On e-bay, auctioned copies of the Times saw a highest bid of 400. In moments like these, the old paper scores over the Internet and the broadcast media because of an otherwise forgotten technical advantage: it doesn8217;t run in time, its pages don8217;t disappear and you can go back to the same old story tomorrow and find it exactly where it is today. No waiting for a repeat telecast, no fumbling through online archives.

The Newspaper Association of America has announced that newspaper circulation has lost almost five million daily readers in the past five years. But dying or not, every paper loves a moment when it can forget the cost of newsprint.