New Report: WAN-IFRA’s World Press Trends Outlook 2022–2023

Business sentiment in the industry has taken a downturn, as news publishers around the world face multiple challenges. Yet there are causes for optimism

Published last month, the most recent World Press Trends report from WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, finds that the news publishing industry is facing a range of challenges, resulting in a decline in business sentiment. However, despite these difficulties, publishers around the world are making progress in diversifying their revenue streams and investing in new editorial products, providing reasons for optimism.

A full copy of the report is embedded below.

I authored the bulk of this study, working alongside Dr François Nel who provided his analysis and to the data collected for the story. Alongside this, WAN-IFRA’s Andrew Heslop shared his analysis on our Press Freedom data, and WAN-IFRA’s Teemu Henriksson helped to coordinate the project along with Dean Roper, Director of Insights and Editor-in-Chief of WAN-IFRA.

The most striking observation from the latest World Press Trends study is the stark contrast to the optimistic tone that we saw in the 2021–22 report.

The industry’s mood has shifted as publishers face an increasingly unpredictable business landscape due to a range of challenges, such as inflation, escalating paper and print costs, and ongoing shifts in advertising markets. As a result, we have seen a significant swing in business sentiment, which is captured in the report.

As with previous years, the study is based on an online survey that was distributed to industry leaders, with 167 news executives from 62 countries participating in a survey distributed during Fall 2022. Thanks to everyone who took part in this.

In addition to the work of the report team, WAN-IFRA collaborates with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Zenith to collect key performance indicators related to global revenues and circulation. To gather audience insights, we partnered with Chartbeat, an analytics specialist. Protecmedia, the content management provider, supports the World Press Trends report.

The report is available to read on SSRN, Academia.edu, ResearchGate, SlideShare and Scribd. I’ll be sharing the study — on a chapter by chapter basis — here on Medium over the coming weeks.