The 2015 annual World Press Trends survey by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, (WAN-IFRA) has again underlined the steady erosion of print media’s viability with another fall in revenue last year. And for the second year in a row, Australian newspapers saw the biggest fall in circulation (including Oceania, ie NZ) of all regions covered in the survey. That also saw Australian and papers in Oceania suffering the biggest fall in circulation over the five years to last December.

“Circulation rose +7.8 percent in Asia in 2015 from a year earlier; it fell -2.4 percent in North America, -2.7 percent in Latin America, -2.6 percent in the Middle East and Africa, -4.7 percent in Europe and -5.4 percent in Australia and Oceania. Over five years, newspaper print unit circulations rose +38.6 percent in Asia but fell elsewhere: -1.2 percent in the Middle East and Africa, -1.5 percent in Latin America, -10.9 percent in North America, -23.8 percent in Europe, and -22.3 percent in Australia and Oceania.”

And looking at print ads (the second major source of revenue for the sector after circulation. In fact newspaper readers are contributing an increasing share of the total revenue at many of the world’s newspapers. The survey showed that newspaper circulation revenue represented 53% of the overall industry revenue in 2015 as print ad and digital revenue growth continued to wane.