Eighteen million print newspapers a week are still being sold in Australia, despite drops in sales of more than 20 per cent in a year, ABC figures show.

Worst hit were Fairfax Media metro titles, with the Sydney Sunday ‘Sun Herald’ down 21.3 per cent to 322,959. Weekday and weekend sales in Sydney and Melbourne all fell, mostly by about 15 per cent, leaving the weekday print runs in both cities at about 160,000 copies. Fairfax has announced plans to close its Chullora (NSW) and Tullamarine (Victoria) print sites by 2014 and print the metro titles at regional plants.

National and News Limited metro titles fares better, with mostly single-digit losses, while News Sydney Saturday ‘Daily Telegraph’ put on the slimmest of increases, 0.1 per cent or 296 copies, and the ‘West Australian’ put on 0.7 per cent for weekdays but lost 5.3 per cent on Saturdays.