The Australian Financial Review has grown its print and digital readership for the year, while its News Corp rival The Australian went backwards in a hard media market.

Total news readership figures from the industry’s data provider, Roy Morgan, show even the weekday print edition of the Financial Review had rapid growth of 18 per cent, compared with last year. That jump recorded in the March quarter data is the highest on record for the statistics database, which goes back to 2019.