Mumbai: Despite persistent fears that the internet and social media have undermined newspapers, print continues to hold its ground. A survey of over 12,000 urban households across Indian cities shows it commands deeper engagement and higher trust than other news mediums such as television and digital platforms, advisory firm Inteliphyle said.
The survey found that print news scored marginally higher than TV on its Net Attention Index, while social media and online news lagged significantly in their depth of engagement. Besides, it showed print commanded the highest trust score from its survey respondents.
“High-trust media also drives disproportionate outcomes: the report indicates around 30% higher engagement (time spent) in high-trust environments,” Inteliphyle said in a report with the survey’s findings, released earlier this month.
The hold of print news is more significant in smaller cities, especially in the eastern Indian states such as Bihar and Jharkhand. Inteliphyle’s survey found 60% of survey respondents read the newspaper in the survey period, just behind online news. Of these newspaper readers, more than two-thirds spent 15-30 minutes reading, while a good 14% spent more than half an hour on the day’s newspaper, indicating far deeper engagement than with news on social media or other online platforms.
The survey’s findings show print continues to be a high-engagement medium, even though digital advertising is steadily rising over traditional mediums. Per data from the Inteliphyle report, the share of traditional mediums, including TV, in advertisers’ overall expenditure on ads was down to 54% in 2025 from 77% in 2019, while digital accounted for 46%.
Even as the reach of news in traditional mediums has fallen post-covid with rising internet penetration, the fall in the reach of newspapers is less than that of TV and radio, the report said. “The symmetry of decline across platforms signals attention fragmentation, not media failure,” the report said. “The narrative of radio or print decline is often overstated in reach terms; what’s visible is redistribution across more screens and moments.”
Print garnered ₹20,0272 crore advertisement expenditure in 2024, at par with the 2019 level, and 5% up year-on-year.
