The nearly $500-million U.S. newspaper technology and equipment market will muddle along in 2002 and beyond without a noticeable bounce into good times, various reports and analyses indicate.

A snapshot of the industry:

• After a nine-year run of advertising dollar growth totaling 48.6 percent, U.S. newspaper publishers gave back almost 9 percent of 2000’s $48.7 billion in revenues in 2001, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Much of the loss was in classifieds.

The NAA’s annual capital equipment survey estimated that newspapers will spend about the same this year as they did in 2001, $478 million. Though new presses will continue to be the top-dollar grosser, material handling and postpress equipment, such as palletizers, will be big sellers, the survey said.

• The newspaper industry’s larger cousin, commercial print, experienced a quick, but weak recovery that paused in May, according to the Printing Industries of America Economic and Print Market Flash Report. Print sales will still grow 2 or 3 percent this year but a lot of that will have to come in the fall. Three hundred printers surveyed estimated the industry would grow 7 percent next year.

• The economic situation isn’t good in other countries. Ifra reports that poor economic conditions have forced cutbacks among German newspaper publishers. Circulation in that country has dropped 600,000 copies per day during the last year, to 27.7 million, the lowest since 1991. Publishers are cutting workforces, editorial staffs and seeking alternative distribution methods.