World Press Trends report available

The comments by Dean Roper, director of insights in the foreword of the World Press Trends report are very illuminating.

Dean Roper said, "Two years ago was one of those watershed moments. A fundamental shift in the newspaper business model took place: reader revenue became the biggest source of revenue for news publishers." Roper added, "Not surprisingly, this year's findings bear out that growing trend, as news publishers continue a concerted effort to build loyal audiences around their high-quality journalism.

One issue which has been recurring in the USA and indeed in India is "the trust issue". Roper said, "I prefer the two sides of trust issue. At a time when trust in traditional media is perhaps at an all-time low, ironically, opportunity knocks for news publishers. And perhaps in a big way."

In this sense, the data set readers come to expect from World Press Trends sheds light on emerging trends – some global, some regional. The annual survey includes data from more than 70 countries, accounting for more than 90 percent of the global industry's value. Here are some of the findings to consider...

The highlights in the report are:

56 percent of newspapers' overall revenue came from circulation sales (print and digital) in 2016.

Global digital circulation revenues grew by 28 percent (YoY), and a full 300 percent from 2012- 2016, with the trend expected to continue.

Reader revenue now makes up about 30 percent of total digital revenue.

Despite that, total global newspaper revenues fell 2.1 percent in 2016 from a year earlier, and are down 7.8 percent over the last five years.

Print still makes up the vast majority of that audience revenue and continues to grow – up by over 3 percent over the past 5 years.

We estimate that in 2016, print's share of total revenues was 91.6 percent, down from 95.1 percent in 2012.

Print advertising revenue continued its decline, 8 percent over the previous period and down 26.8 percent over the past five years.

Digital advertising grew by 5% from 2015 to 2016, highlighting the ongoing challenge publishers face to generate not just more digital revenues but also new revenue streams to offset print losses.