Printed media in Europe - statistics & facts

The newspaper industry in Europe has been deeply affected by new media and by the radical change in reading choices of customers when it comes to reading the news. In Norway for example, the revenue of printed newspapers decreased from 13.7 billion Norwegian Krone in 2011 to 10.5 billion in 2015, whereas the revenue of digital newspapers more than doubled over the same period of time. Not only the revenue, but the number of employees working for publishing companies has decreased. In Denmark for example, the number of employees working for daily newspapers decreased from 9,863 in 2013 to 8,889 in 2014.Gruppo Editoriale l´Espresso, one of the main media conglomerates in Italy, saw its number of journalists change from 1,087 in 2013 to 990 as of June 2016.

Another industry affected by digital media is the magazine market. The revenue generated by magazines in Germany decreased from roughly 3.3 billion euros in 2013 to 3.1 billion in 2016, showing that daily newspapers are not the only ones facing a crisis. The number of magazine readers in Norway also decreased. In 2015 over one million individuals read magazines for adult women. The following year the number of readers was 983 thousand. The lack of readers and the drop in revenue forced the closure of some weeklies. In Norway, the number of published weeklies fell from 92 in 2012 to 64 in 2015. On the other hand daily time spent reading has remained relatively stable. A survey in Greece found that the daily time spent reading magazines increased from 35.1 minutes in 2012 to 39.2 minutes per person in 2015.

Advertising represents a big part of the income of the printed press, but is not immune to the crisis the press is facing. Taking Spain as an example, the advertising revenue of printed newspapers will face a decrease from 1.1 billion euros in 2009 to 550 million euros by 2020 according to forecasts. The situation is the same when switching to magazines: in the Netherlands for instance, magazine print advertising is predicted to decrease from 382 million euros in 2012 to 195 million euros in 2020.