Frankfurt (dpa) – Print newspapers in Germany lost more readers in the last 12 months than in the previous year, a report released on Tuesday showed.
Across the country, 39.3 million people read a daily newspaper in 2018, the report by the Frankfurt-based Media Analysis Workshop (AGMA) showed, representing a drop of 1.3 million readers since 2017.
The research does not include news consumed electronically.
Currently, print newspapers reach 55.8 per cent of German speakers aged 14 years or more, compared to 57.9 per cent in 2017.
The most popular newspaper by far remains the daily Bild, which is read daily by 9.42 million people, a drop of 350,000 readers since 2017.
The large nationwide subscription newspapers have managed to hang on to their readers, with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung up 10,000 readers over the year to 1.25 million, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung unchanged on 760,000, and Die Welt down 50,000 on 660,000.
“The decrease in the … numbers recorded in total over the last few years plausibly reflects the changing reading behaviour of printed issues,” Gerhard Mueller, head of daily newspapers at AGMA, said.
“Nevertheless, the newspaper is and remains a stable and high-quality advertising medium, with a long reach, with, at the same time, a particularly intensive use by an interested readership.”
The researchers questioned more than 130,000 people 14 years of age or older about their consumption of printed daily newspapers.