Only five per cent of Australians don't read news media, most turning to digital formats for the content.

New Emma figures show the 17.6 million readers is an increase of 158,000 from the previous month, with digital news media leading the growth, rising to 16.1 million or 87 per cent of the population, and print news media read by 11.8 million people, or 64 per cent. Across print and digital platforms, 10.3 million people, or 56% of the population reads news media.

NewsMediaWorks chief executive Peter Miller says the latest figures confirm that the news media industry is growing its large and engaged readership base: "Trust can not be underestimated when it comes to media choices, for both readers and advertisers, and news media is irrefutably the nation's most trusted media channel for both content and advertising."

Nine's the Sydney Morning Herald is Australia's highest-reaching title across all platforms with 8.02 million readers, followed by The Age (also owned by Nine) followed, reaching 4.42 million readers, and News Corp's Daily Telegraph with 4.24 million (see table below).

emma cross platform readership (000s, last four weeks)	emma March 2019
Sydney Morning Herald	8023
The Age	4416
Daily Telegraph	4235
Herald Sun	4094
The Australian	3672
The West Australian & The Sunday Times	3505
Courier-Mail	2627
Financial Review	2608
Adelaide Advertiser	1829
Canberra Times	817
Newcastle Herald	806
The Senior	686
The Weekly Times	680
Illawarra Mercury	524
Sunshine Coast Daily	523
The Saturday Paper	510
Northern Territory News	465
Mercury	435
Gold Coast Bulletin	423
Geelong Advertiser	381
Townsville Bulletin	379
Cairns Post	373
The Courier	361
The Land	354
Chronicle	314
The Examiner	281
Northern Star	279
Bendigo Advertiser NDP	269
The Border Mail NDP	217
The Morning Bulletin	214
The Advocate (Burnie) NDP	184
The Daily Advertiser NDP	174

• The digital audience numbers in the above TAR are reported only if they meet the sample size thresholds agreed between Nielsen and TRW.
• The following titles have dropped below the sample size threshold and are missing in the March '19 TAR: GQ, Home Beautiful, Just Cars, PC & Tech Authority, Queensland Country Life, The Standard, Vogue Living
• The following titles were below the threshold in the February '19 report but are now appearing in the March '19 report: Men's Health, The Monthly, The Saturday Paper, The Senior
• ^NDP Figures are not calibrated to DCR for the Bendigo Advertiser, The Border Mail, The Advocate (Burnie) and The Daily Advertiser.

Sources:

1. emma^TM, Survey conducted by Ipsos Connect, People 14+, 12 months ending March 2019, 14+ Nielsen Digital Panel data calibrated to Digital Content Ratings March 2019.
2. Print Readership based on last four weeks with the exception of minor regional titles which are based on Average Issue Readership. Trends compared with 12 months to March 2018. NDP, Nielsen Digital Panel, March 2019, People 14+ calibrated to Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) data for the equivalent period. All readership based on last four weeks.
3. The digital unique audience figures in this report are not DCR currency. Nielsen makes every effort to align the NDP digital numbers with DCR but they will not be exactly the same due to the following reasons:
4. a) A technique known as soft calibration is used to align NDP with tagged websites in DCR - complete alignment isn't possible due to the number of websites involved
5. b) There is a difference in the universe between the two products; DCR is 13+ and emma-CMV is 14+
6. c) The calibration process used to align NDP with DCR uses text for the targets and not video

The calibration of NDP Digital audience to DCR represents a change in methodology and therefore a trend break that renders year on year comparisons invalid for digital news media and total audience. The break will last until October 2019. Print is unaffected.

4. ADTRUST; AdTrust Wave 3 research IPSOS Connect November 2018: Online questionnaire: n= 2503 Australians aged 18+ Nationally representative.