News Corp newspaper revenue down by 18%

Full year revenue for News Corp newspapers slumped by 18 per cent for its global portfolio, while EBITDA for the newspaper division plunged by 71 per cent.

Revenue for News newspapers in 2019-20 was down to US$2.8bn, while EBITDA fell to US$53m from US$200m last year. Most of the pain would have been in the final quarter when Covid hit.

The company owns a string of high-profile papers across the world including the New York Post; the Times and The Sun in the UK; and The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and Herald Sun in Australia.

It also owns the Wall Street Journal, but this year split that off from the rest of the pack into a separate division based around the Dow Jones. This division saw a 13 per cent rise in EBITDA.

The News newspaper business has been battered by Covid as advertisers fled. In Australia it stopped printing 112 regional and community newspapers, moving 76 online and permanently closing the rest.

But it is pressing on with a new greenfield print site on the outskirts of Melbourne and has just signed a historic deal with rivals Nine and ACM which will see it print most of their papers at its sites across Australia.

Robert Thomson, CEO at News Corp, said, "Across the company, we have taken stringent action to reduce costs, and the benefits of those cuts will be felt in coming quarters. We have also launched a shared services programme that we believe will transform the company, by centralising many of our functions. We are confident that this program should appreciably cut costs and expect it to have a materially positive impact on our bottom line."