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With so many people still stuck working from home, the desire to increasingly pay for quality journalism within the UK seems evermore on the increase. And even more so across Europe.
Newsworks, an organisation promoting marketing with the UK national press, produced a survey late last year showing that 38 million people are reading a news brand each day, 46% of whom have done this by the end of the morning. 78% of this consumption is being delivered to the home.
This is borne out by the success of the UK’s quality newspapers.
The weekend FT has had gains of 20% since November 2019 and the weekday FT has seen its circulation increase across Europe for the last five months in a row.
Over this same time period ft.com has increased its unique users by 64%. Its monthly visits are up 62% and page views by 41%.
The Daily and Sunday Telegraph combined have seen an increase of 6.6m registrants since January 2020. Over the same period subscriptions have gone up 32% and digital subscriptions up to 365,743 from its start three years ago.
50-60% of the Telegraph papers are physically delivered. 15,500 signed up for free delivery in the first lockdown and this pattern is likely to be repeated during the third one.
In Germany, the success story gets ever stronger with subscription increases for all major German media. Year-on-year increases have been seen by Handelsblatt (+2.4%); Der Spiegel (+5.5%); Manager Magazin (+6%); Süddeutsche Zeitung (+0.6%) and Die Zeit (+15% - the highest since its launch in 1946).
In the Netherlands FD – the leading financial title - has seen its subscriptions rise 7% year-on-year.
In France, the most trusted news medium is print followed - in order - by radio, TV, online and social media. Nine in 10 (90%) of them trust what they read. Les Echos website has seen an increase of 66% in their traffic since February 2020. Le Figaro, which is 77% subscribed to, has seen its online version put on 1,200 new subscribers every day and is now up to 200,000.
In Scandinavia, where pay walls are more prevalent - Norway has the highest number of people accessing news through a pay wall - Berlingske (Danish) and Dagens Nyheter and Dagens Industri (both Swedish) have seen circulation increases with the latter two Swedish quality newspapers showing 7% and 1% increases respectively.
Finally in Italy, the Manzoni publishing group which publishes the leading finance journal Affari & Finanza has seen its circulation rise by 20% year-on-year. And leading quality newspaper Corriere della Sera is still more likely to be the port of call for news than many social media.