Afp, Paris

The coronavirus crisis has weighed heavily on print newspapers already battling for survival around the world, with the number of copies sold tumbling while less profitable digital readerships surge.

Simply delivering printed papers to the shops -- or having customers come in to buy them -- has become a challenge, worsening a years-long decline in sales and advertising revenue.

“Consumption of printed newspapers has fallen as lockdowns undermine physical distribution, almost certainly accelerating the shift to an all-digital future,” the Reuters Institute’s 2020 annual report said.

Major dailies in Brazil and Mexico have already switched to online-only or dropped some days’ editions, while in the Philippines 10 of the 70 newspapers in the PPI association have shuttered.

“Times are hard. There are no advertisers and no-one is reading us,” PPI executive director Ariel Sebellino told AFP.