...in Britain, the Financial Times’ circulation dropped by 6.6 %; in Germany, sales have fallen by 7.7% over the last five years, in Denmark by 9.5%, Austria by 9.9%, in Belgium by 6.9%, and even in Japan, whose citizens are the biggest buyers of newspapers, newspaper sales fell by 2.2%. Over the past eight years, the number of daily newspapers sold in the European Union has fallen by 7 million. Worldwide, paid circulation of papers is dropping by an average of 2% every year. Some people have asked if the written press might not be something from the past - an industrial-era medium on the road to extinction.