Fading headlines: The struggle of newsagents in a changing market

Chocolate raisins, The Sunday Times and a 50p bet. It’s a tradition I still relive when I visit my parents. The bookies still might be popular, but the newspapers are thinning out at the offie.

It's a trend I first reported on more than five years ago, with more and more newsagents actively avoiding stocking papers and magazines.

Why? Cover prices had substantially increased (more than 138% over the last decade) and these independent retail outlets also had to pay carriage charges to one of the big two wholesalers, Smiths News or Menzies.

Back then News UK still distributed its own products inside the M25, but the publisher stopped that practice in 2023 after signing an agreement with Smiths (link).

This has allowed the London-listed company to dominate the south and middle of England, while Menzies roughly covers the north of England, parts of Wales and Scotland (see map below).

So where are we now? The economic environment for newsagents has only gotten worse since then.

As Peter Williamson of the Federation of Independent Retailers (Fed) explained, costs have “gone through the roof”, with these businesses facing excruciating electricity bills and increased labour-related fees (including National Wage and National Insurance hikes).

“Retail crime is also at an all-time high with little to no local support from Police. We at the Fed have been campaigning for many years about this but crime has increased, not just shoplifting, but physical and verbal abuse also,” Williamson added.

Margins are looking tight across the board and even major chains like WH Smiths are considering leaving the high-street. What chance do the little guys have?

The collectibles market, namely Pokémon cards and FIFA/UEFA stickers, have given some newsagents a lifeline thanks to their large margins. But vapes, probably the most lucrative product for these businesses, are increasingly facing insurmountable regulatory pressures.

In this environment, newspapers are seen as a burden. Carriage charges for independent retailers can be between £75 and £80 per week, according to the Fed, while a good break-even point would be around £350 over the same period.

If you factor in the aforementioned cover price hikes, you are looking at margins of around 15%. “You used to generate margins of around 28% for regional titles,” Williamson said.

He explained that newsagents who want to keep their business are now opening later and outsourcing their paper-rounds. Others are either shutting up shop or looking for the next best thing after vapes.

Smiths News, meanwhile, started 2025 in a strong position. It was able to secure long-term contracts with 91% of its newspaper and magazine revenues by the end of 2024. That included a new £160 million agreement with Reach PLC (link).

And though the business’ revenues are expected to fall over the next few years to around £930 million, the company’s dividend yield is projected to be an attractive 8.8% (Berenberg).

Reach is also painting a brighter picture of print’s future than expected, with a recent announcement stating that the company is expecting to beat the markets’ financial expectations (link) ahead of its full-year results in March.

The last set of earnings (FY2023) saw a strong print circulation performance from Reach, with £312 million in revenues, up from £307 million in 2022. Reach continues to sell 750,000 print newspapers per day.

The structural decline of print continues, but it’s still generating quite a bit of cash.