As with Havas, WPP was also affected by a sharp drop in revenue from public relations and public affairs—sectors that are supposed to hold up better during difficult times.
However, that has given way to a more sober assessment: while digital edition circulation is up 50% year-on-year, to 585,000, most of this is driven by brands in the news and current affairs sectors, such as the Economist, The Week and Spectator.
National policies on global health appear as one way that actors from health, development and foreign affairs sectors in a country coordinate state action on global health.
Investors Chronicle, from FT Business, was one of the rare fallers in the current affairs sector, with circulation dropping 5% year on year and 2.2% period on period to 28,516.
In a largely positive set of results for the news and current affairs sector, BBC History Magazine, produced by Radio Times publisher Immediate Media, was also up, 4.7% on the first half of last year to 78,695.
More than a year on from Lobbying: Access and Influence in Whitehall, the first parliamentary inquiry into the public affairs sector for 20 years, Wright offered a candid and upbeat view of the industry, acknowledging both the absolute right to lobby MPs and the substantial benefit to government of receiving such representations.
Private Eye easily outperformed rivals in the current affairs magazine sector with an average fortnightly sale of 228,112 in the six months to the end of December.
"I am personally sad to be exiting the public affairs information sector but, given my parliamentary duties, it is both timely and makes good sense," he said.
Elsewhere in the news and current affairs magazine sector, market leader the fortnightly Private Eye saw its sales growth of the past two years finally plateau.
The Economist's circulation topped 200,000 in the UK for the first time in the title's 167-year history in the six months to December 2010, which proved a successful period generally for the current affairs magazine sector.
"There is a newspaper-ish view of the state of affairs in the sector," said Philip Kirkpatrick, managing partner and joint head of charity at Bates Wells & Braithwaite.
