Trends – as habitually bolstered by forecasts and predictions – are what Decembers are all about: tidings of comfort, grief, and unwelcome realities intermingled. Thus (to take a notional example), shopping trends might indicate that, at current rates, our otherwise blighted high streets will be choked by Amazon delivery vans come 2024. But who'll point out that a landscape so infernally blighted will repel rather than attract shopaholics? This is what is called, in all common sense, a non-fulfilling prophecy, excitable tabloid extrapolations turned ridiculous down a long tunnel of blinkered vision. Which brings us to 2013, the media year of trending obsessively – and living uncertainly.
It's exactly four years since – at a heavyweight conference in eastern Europe – I heard an expert on the communications apocalypse predict that, only five years hence, printed newspapers would be dead and digitally buried. The trends, he said, were clear. Umm… not exactly. There's an awful lot of perishing left to cram into the next 12 months, and it shows no sign of happening any time soon. Indeed, rather the reverse. Bring on Ken Doctor, a great American guru, offering us five, 10 or more 15 years to choose from. Nemesis indefinitely delayed.
And the most fascinating thing about the ABC-sanctified print circulation results (for November) involve two politically polar opposites on the newsstand: the Telegraph and the Guardian. Both belong to the national quality market. Both, over the years, have cleared out bulk sales and other devices that prop up or confuse their sales figures. Both have solid and growing online statistics to boast about: the Telegraph with 13,855,000 unique visitors and the Guardian with 12,301,000 on the latest UKOM results. They leave everything but the inevitable Mail online far behind. But what does this mean for print, for copies pushed across the newsagent's counter or dropped through a letterbox?
Well, The Guardian has had a fine six-month run on the ABCs, with circulation standing more than 12,000 sold copies a day higher than in last June, and four months of consistent rises from August to November. The Telegraph, too, has contrived exemplary stability, its print sales down only 2.9% year-on-year, with November a mere couple of thousand short of June. Better yet, it sold more than 11,000 full-price copies in the UK and Ireland than it did in November 2012. The Guardian was only 1,200 down on that score.
Where's the fascination? Simply that here are two papers bucking – at least for a decent period – the posited trends of doom and oblivion. Their online reach, in Britain and then in the rest of the world, is increasing. But there's no sign of print buyers opting for digital and hopping from one platform to another. On the contrary, both papers are big digital leaders as well. In theory, they ought to be among the most vulnerable to a drain of platform hoppers. In practice, that doesn't seem to be a problem. Competitors behind paywalls –say the Sun – have difficulties on the draining front: UKOM finds another 15.6% of unique visitors gone in October, its third month of paywall existence, and ABC print sales of the Bun were down 2.83% month-on-month in November. Does 117,000 paying subscribers make up for that shortfall? It's a reasonable question that uncertainty can't answer as yet.
Nevertheless, managers at both the Telegraph and Guardian have reasons for cheer, and perhaps for surprise. Year-on-year, they're only down 0.38% and 1.93% respectively, exceeding expectations and a clutch of damned trends. The paywalled Times, in spite of hanging on to a £1 cover price, has lost 3.55% in a sector where the Independent and the Financial Times – each down nearly 14% respectively – throw broader sector calculations askew. There's reason for raised eyebrows as well as celebration here.
Now, of course, 2014 may be a year of disappointment far and wide. Remember the masters-of-the-world spiel when Facebook launched: now watch Twitter and Pinterest breathe down its neck. Remember the news riches that were supposed to flow from tablets and smartphones: now watch newspaper companies struggling to get more than 5% of total ad revenues that way. Remember the wonder of hyperlocal opportunity as AoL's Patch network set up hundreds of sites across America: dead, buried, only this month. Remember how Apple's Newsstand was supposed to mean tablet salvation for magazines: then forget it, because the Mac men seem to have done just that. And don't even mention digital first, last, or somewhere in between.
The pathway to the media future, in short, comes paved with good intentions and mixed results. Sometimes the inevitability of despond appears to hang heavy (over declining print ad revenues, for instance). Sometimes the real differences within markets defy prediction. Sometimes the easy doctrine of print's demise in a digital world seems incontrovertible. Sometimes odd, contrary things ruin that plot.
Trends? You can buy them by the expert yard. But what actually happens next? Come back next year and see.
■ Comatose with Coren, wasted with Witherow, plastered with Parris? This Christmas, try the Times London Dry Gin as your "drink of choice" at £34.95 a bottle (reduced to £29.95 for the boozing season). Bring on this prime mix of "juniper, coriander, orris root, liquorice root, angelica, cassia bark, cinnamon" and dried peels with "a zest of white and pink grapefruit, clementine and pomelo". The perfect News UK soporific, best served on the rocks. With a twist of Rupert, no doubt.
