While Asia newspaper readership grows, with it grows journalistic responsibility.

Many of today's business leaders, not only in the media, are experiencing a frightening loss of control. Seemingly stable businesses collapse while recently unknown companies challenge entire industries.

Printed newspapers have lost the majority of classified advertising to ‘upstart' online classified sites - much as free newspapers ‘stole' classified ads under the noses of their more expensive paid-for rivals, before building the significant circulations that enabled them to successfully compete for display ads. Traditional paid-for newspapers then acquired their free competitors - just as today they are acquiring, as well as launching their own Web sites. It reminds me of the song about the cat that ate the bird that ate the spider that ate the fly ...

Today, the ‘fly' - the individual with no start-up capital, but on a well-written ‘mission', can win many thousands of readers to his or her blog. Meanwhile, more traditional printed newspapers are thriving in many parts of the world, especially Asia.

In June 2007, the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) stated that Indian newspaper sales increased 12.93 percent in 2006 and 53.63 percent in the previous five-year period. Also that seven of 10 of the world's 100 best selling dailies are now published in Asia. Together China, Japan and India account for 60 of them with the five largest markets for newspapers being China, with 98.7 million copies sold daily; India, with 88.9 million; Japan, with 69.1 million; the United States with 52.3 million and Germany, with21.1 million copies sold daily.

Even in today's harsh economic climate, in Asia and Africa new newspapers are being launched - while in generally more wealthy countries - newspapers are being closed.

On November 12^th 2008, the daily Jakarta Globe was launched in Indonesia. Six weeks later, on January 4^th, 2009 Timbuktu Media, in Lagos, Nigeria, launched NEXT and NEXTonSunday.

A. Lin Neumann, the Chief Editorial Adviser to the Jakarta Globe, states, "that where there was no press freedom, journalists shared information at great personal risk."

He goes on to say, "that the greater tragedy of those dark times was not the hardship imposed on individual journalists. It was the broader disservice done to entire nations. Corruption, misrule and human rights violations thrive in the shadows. When there is a real risk of exposure in the press - be it on the Internet, radio, TV or print - those in power are held more accountable.

"The flip side, of course, is that journalists have a responsibility to get stories right and to be held accountable when they sometimes get it wrong. That is the bargain journalists make with the reader, and in the end, the more voices probing, questioning and examining, the better it should be for an informed public."

How newspapers deliver information is not important. The freedom to inform is. The next step is for newspapers to get to know their audience more intimately.