Page 79 - Consuming Media

01Consuming Media 10/4/07 11:17 am Page 66

3. PRINT MEDIA

There are several shops in the shopping centre that sell newspapers, magazines and
books, i.e. media in which the written and printed word has the centre stage, but
which may also contain pictures. Print media are among the oldest and most widely
used mass media, historically fundamental for the growth of the modern society and
culture, and still an important part of daily life. In an ordinary day, 81 per cent of
the Swedish population read a daily paper, 39 per cent read some kind of magazine
and 37 per cent read a book. Only television and radio can compete with these
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figures. In this respect, the Nordic countries tend to present comparatively high
figures, but the reading of printed texts is a key cultural practice all over the world.
In the shopping centre, newspapers, magazines and other periodicals are sold
primarily at the confectioners and tobacconists, but also in some grocery stores,
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where paperbacks can be found as well. Otherwise, books are primarily sold in the
two bookshops, representing Sweden’s two largest chains of bookshops. But books,
newspapers and magazines are also available in a non-commercial space: the large,
modern and well-attended municipal public library, located in the shopping centre.
The library is one of few buildings that the city did not sell to private interests when
it sold land to make room for a new shopping centre at the beginning of the 1960s.
Today, the library has a large reading room where people can sit and read newspapers,
magazines and other periodicals, though they cannot be taken home. But, as is
normal in libraries, one can take out books and ‘non-print’ material such as audio
books. Many people think of the library as a place where people mainly borrow and
read books. Certainly, lots of books are borrowed from Solna public library, but
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almost half the visitors (44 per cent) do not borrow or return books. Instead they
read newspapers and magazines (18 per cent), borrow/return CDs or videos, study,
or use the Internet-linked computers. Though books dominate, many other media
are today represented in the library.
Nor do bookshops only sell books. In Sweden, bookshops have always depended
economically on selling stationery, and today it could even be said that the bookshop
is the line of business with the widest selection of different media. Bookshops sell
postcards, classical music CDs, children’s videos, audio books on cassette and CD,
and CD-ROMs with games and encyclopaedias, just to give a few examples. This
multiplicity of products have made the conditions for selling books more like those
for newspapers and magazines, which have long been sold in stores in which they are
not the main attraction; newspapers and magazines in kiosks and grocery stores have
shared the space with tobacco, sweets, games, soft drinks and stockings. The differ-
ence, compared to books, is that in such an environment newspapers and magazines