News sells newspapers. The arrival of the royal baby will provide a small bundle of joy to proprietors and the newsagents who hawk their products this week. But the bigger picture is of steady decline, not birth. Since 2008 the overall circulation of Britain's national newspapers has dropped by a quarter. Much more than in America, Japan or much of Europe, British newspapers depend on casual readers buying them from newsagents (see chart). That is bad news: it is easier to bin the habit of picking up a newspaper every day than it is to cancel a subscription. But some newspaper groups are striving to change behaviour.
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