Most national newspapers saw encouraging starts to the new century with January sales bouncing back from the traditional Christmas slump. Sunday Business outperformed the market with an impressive 9.3% gain and there were strong performances from the Sunday red tops with the Sunday Mirror up nearly 8%, the News of the World and Sunday Sport both up an impressive 7.2% and the People rising by 4.5%. In the Sunday broadsheet market the Sunday Times was up 5.8% to 1,373,900. In contrast, the Sunday Telegraph continued to lose sales and was down 0.6% to 815,093. Again it was the tabloids that put in good performances in the daily market. Here the Daily Mail rose 5% month on month to 2,427,888 while arch rival The Express was up nearly 4% to 1,050,846. The Sun increased by 4.8% to 3,557,336 and the Mirror went up 4.2% to 2,270,543. There was a disappointing performance from the Daily Star, however, which saw sales down 0.6% to hover just over the 500,000 mark. When six monthly sales figures are compared with those of a year earlier it is clear that most publishers are finding the market tough going. The Financial Times was just one of four newspapers to buck the trend with a 13% year on year sales rise. With the exception of the Daily Mail (up 1.13%), the Independent (1.5%) and the Guardian (0.2%), all other dailies and Sundays lost sales compared to the same six month period in 1998/99. Most disappointing performances came from the Star (­6.17%), The Express (­5.5%) and the Sport ­ down 10.5% to an average six monthly ABC of just over 200,000. {{CTN }}