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Daily Newspapers

Map No. 341

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There are daily newspapers in every territory of the world. In 2002 there were 507 million newspapers circulated every day. This includes newspapers that are free and those that are sold. Newspapers are a means for literate people to learn about current affairs, they are how most journalists present stories.

The highest number of daily newspapers in circulation are in China, Japan and India. In Japan there are 566 copies of newspapers circulated for every 1000 people living there; circulation in China and India is a tenth of this. The world average daily newspaper circulation is 81 per thousand, or 2 newspapers produced for every 25 people in the world.

"I think the duty of doctors is to give health to their patients, the duty of the singer to sing. The duty of [the] journalist [is] to write what this journalist sees in the reality. It’s only one duty." Anna Politkovskaya, 2004

Territory size shows the proportion of all copies of daily newspapers distributed there.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page