OLSAA (ОЛСАА) is a department within the St. Petersburg section of the National Library. The abbreviation stands for 'Department of Literatures of Asian and African Countries', which actually means 'Department of Asian and African Languages' and it contains Hebrew and Yiddish printings. This site reproduces two catalogues: that of Hebrew magazines and that of Hebrew papers.
OLSAA collection of Hebrew press starts from 1788 and goes up to 2001.
The collection is evidently dissected into two almost unrelated parts of equal size (of different value though): European press of 1850—1920 and Israel press of 1921—2001. USA media are too few (in OLSAA) to be taken into account. For a period of Russian Silver Age (1890—1915) one can observe synchronous existence of both Galut and Yishuv press which had ceased by World War I. Belle Époque never lasts for long.
Post-war Israeli part of the collection is a sort of boring, we'd better concentrate our attention on the European part.
Space
Here we can notice few curiosities. First of all, areal distribution: 150 European editions are published in 33 places. Like average 5 papers in each place. Yet devision is very spotted: ⅓ part of all was edited in Warsaw (47), another ⅓ part had seen the light in three cities: Wilna (18), Berlin (16), Saint-Petersburg (15) and the last ⅓ of 54 editions is distributed within 29 places remained. I won't draw that mercedes-like circle, but you can imagine that.
Also curious is a role of near-border places: Polish towns within Austrian and German Empires were used for publishing. It was easier to obtain a licence for printing a newspaper or a magazine in Western Empires, though the final goal of a publisher was to import his product to the Russian Empire, where have been settled his customers and subscribers. That's why ha-Magid was published in a tiny town of Lyck (Ełk now) and ha-Yom started in Königsberg.
All other editions are borded by the Pale of Settlement. Within Russian Empire one can note higher activity of Ukraine, lower one of Belorus. It seems like Belorus considered a province of Poland and editors preferred to start their projects in Warsaw, just like in Western Europe they gravitated to Berlin and Vienna, not Praha or Budapest.
The real question is where were the readers. E.g. analysis of personal advertizings in Moscow Hoom of 1917—1918 shows a spread from Helsingfors to Harbin, including Siberia and Middle Russia. But that's another story.
Time
All statistics here are about the collection, not about the real world. It deals more with Russian politics than with general state of Jewish culture (one can easy find correlation between collection's dynamics and pogroms of 1906, revolutions of 1917, Soviet-Polish war of 1919-1921, Brezhnev's era and so on). Yet the collection can be considered as a kind of Olam Qatan (microcosm), reflecting the whole wide world, though with certain perspective distortion.
The collection starts with few West European magazines of Berlin and Vienna. Mostly these two capitals are presented, no Czechia, unique editions from Romania and Hungary. In 1860ies the Hebrew press of Russian Empire springs up. In the European part of the collection Poland prevails: Warsaw remains the biggest center of Hebrew press both in Imperial period and after the break of Polish independence in 1917 (unlike Wilna, which was more active before Revolution of 1917).
In the beginning of XX cent. press migrated from Palestine to Europe, in 1920ies it began to move westward: from Soviet Russia to Poland and Lithuania (or rather to Berlin), in 1930ies to Israel etc.
Really, anyone can trace on his/her own the growth of daily newspapers or magazines for kids — labels give such an opportunity. The statistics below was made only to show glorious rise of XIX cent. and sad dynamics of 1920ies.
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