Their annual reports this week contrast the levels of publicity accorded to each of Australia's two largest newspaper publishers.

And emphasise our previously-expressed view that editorial balance would be lost if there were fewer players in the country's newsmedia market.

Having earlier announced that it would write down the value of its newspaper mastheads by almost A$1 billion, Fairfax Media may be considered to have done well with a 2015-16 net loss of A$893.5 million, compared to an A$83.2 million profit the previous year.

It's hard to get a comparable figure out of News Corp's consolidated global balance sheets, but its likely that this year's US$695 million fall in the valuations of group net intangible assets and goodwill hints at a similar story.

You wouldn't expect to see the positives of Fairfax's situation given prominence in the report posted by The Australian, and they're not: A 7.6 per cent reduction in underlying net profit to A$132.5 million and 0.6 per cent fall in revenue to A$1.83 billion given prominence.

And while the same paper reported its owner's "robust five per cent increase" in fourth quarter revenues - with foreign exchange blamed that they weren't higher - there is little or no mention of what's going on in its own core print-based businesses, with a rare mention of activities Down Under a nod to "higher paid volume, thanks to digital" at The Australian.

Both companies make the importance of digital revenue clear, News saying that aggressive growth in its news and information services segment has seen it grow from 19 to 23 per cent of segment revenues. Fairfax puts earnings from non-print assets at 42 per cent of group EBITDA, which chief executive Greg Hywood expects to rise to 60 per cent next year. The Domain real estate listings business is big for Fairfax, growing by a third, while group digital real estate services revenue grew 32 per cent for News Corp, from US$625 to US$822 million.

Legal and other extraordinary costs also lurk, whether it's the impact of the A$300,000 Fairfax has been ordered to pay a personal trainer in respect of articles published by the Sydney Morning Herald, or the US$19 million (down from US$50 million the previous year) adjusted net impact on EBITDA of what News euphemistically refers to as "UK Newspaper matters", or "certain conduct at The News of the World".

None of the above pretends to be a detailed or comprehensive picture of a complicated subject: There's been a huge amount of space this week devoted to each company's financial and related results, which tends to confirm that both are suffering. And that like everything, "it's the way you tell it"; our view is that they'd do well - for the sake of the industry as a whole - to keep off each others' backs.

Peter Coleman