World Press Trends 2019 signifies balancing act of publishers

Findings of the 30th edition of the World Press Trends report underscore the ongoing conundrum of the industry. It signifies the overall global revenues in 2018 continued to shrink as did some newsrooms, yet paying audiences and demand for quality news continue to increase. The report analyses the data collected from WAN-IFRA’s annual survey of more than 50 countries, in addition to the insights and data from its global partners, including Zenith Optimedia, IPSOS, PwC, Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and IO Technologies.

This year’s analysis was conducted by Dr. François Nel, Reader in Media Innovation at the Media Innovation Studio, University of Central Lancashire, Dr Coral Milburn-Curtis, Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, University of Oxford, and Prof. Castulus Kolo, Macromedia University of Applied Sciences, Munich (Germany). World Press Trends features many of the industry key performance indicators, which consist of global revenues (print & digital) declined by three percent (YoY 2018) with much of that hit coming from print advertising revenue (down seven percent). Digital advertising revenues increased by five percent and are forecast to improve.