It’s no secret that the way the world consumes news is changing. Gone are the days when people would rely on daily newspapers for their dose of information–instead, a world of online information is available every second of every day.
The figures speak for themselves. In the US alone, 47% of millennials get their news every day from social media, 23% from news websites, and just 7% from newspapers. Couple that with the fact that weekday print circulation in the US decreased by 12% last year, it’s clear to see the overarching trend for 2020.
Top Newspaper WordPress Themes on Themeforest
Whatever your views on the changing face of the newspaper industry, if you get your newspaper website right, it’s an environment with ample opportunity to attract audiences hungry for the latest news. Selecting a newspaper WordPress theme from ThemeForest can be a great way to do just that–even if you don’t have any traditional design or coding skills, you can set up a high-quality and professional site in next to no time.
With such a vast industry, there are many newspaper themes to choose from, so read on for a round-up of some of our favorites for 2020 and beyond.
1. Newspaper
With more than 6,000 reviews and an overall five-star rating, this theme certainly has popularity on its side. It supports YouTube videos to help you bring your content to life, is fully SEO optimized, and has a fast loading time – a feature that couldn’t be more important if you want to reduce your bounce rate. For when you’re ready to monetize the site, it also supports responsive Google Ads and Adsense, plus there’s an option for the WooCommerce plugin.
The slick theme comes with many different templates to choose from, so you can easily select a site that reflects the content you want to show to the world.
2. Newsroom – Newspaper Theme
This modern newspaper theme leaves plenty of room for customization. Content is organized by clean and clear blocks, which can be ordered based on the stories you want to tell. There are also four post sliders to choose from, each enabling the user to scroll through content in an aesthetically pleasing way. Social share functionality is also available and designed in a way that it doesn’t detract from the site’s sleek feel.
3. TIMES – Newspaper Magazine Theme
If you’re looking to really engage your audience, this WordPress online newspaper theme puts comment functionality front and center. Whether you want to stick with the black and white scheme provided in the template or add additional color palettes, there’s also a live customizer which makes editing seriously simple.
4. PRESSO – Modern Magazine / Newspaper / Viral Theme (translation)
Satisfy your readers’ desire for content with this premium newspaper WordPress theme, which allows for infinite scrolling with no wait time for full page load. Instant search also makes finding relevant content super simple, allowing users to explore way beyond the homepage.
It couldn’t be easier to translate this theme into your preferred language, you just need to use a translation plugin or bundled .po file.
5. Newspread – Magazine, Blog, Newspaper and Review WordPress Theme (support)
Praised online for the team’s customer support, Newspread is one of the best newspaper wordpress themes out there if you’re a real beginner as any questions are likely to be answered quickly. There’s also support for Mailchimp widgets if you’d like to start sending out a regular newsletter to subscribers, plus 7 post formats to enable you to make the site your own.
6. Patch – Unconventional Newspaper-Like Blog Theme
Inspired by traditional newspapers, this theme really stands out. Overlapping imagery and content boxes put navigation in the users’ hands, allowing them to explore the site in their own way by choosing the content most useful to them. Again, it’s fully customizable so you can adapt the colors and fonts to best reflect your style.
7. Vinkmag – Multi-concept News Magazine WordPress Theme
This newspaper template WordPress theme is packed with fantastic features that give it a truly high-end feel. The reading progress bar quickly shows people how far they’ve got in the article, adding to the already clear user experience. You can also pick your website width and choose between light and dark modes based on the look and feel of the site you’re trying to create. The theme is also praised for its regular updates and easy-to-use layout.
8. Saxon – Viral Content Blog & Magazine Marketing WordPress Theme
With 27 reusable homepage blocks, there are loads of different ways you can experiment with this theme until you find the perfect style. This template also ticks off all the essentials – it’s optimized for SEO and page speed, is fully responsive, plus it supports WooCommerce. There’s also the option to include a ‘breaking news’ banner at the top of the site to catch readers’ attention.
9. Newsbeat – Optimized WordPress Magazine Theme
With 9 demos included within this versatile mobile-first theme, you can quickly see how it can be adapted to the content you’re looking to produce. There are also 5 header styles mixable with more than 25 header layouts which makes organizing your site simple.
10. Darpan – News Magazine WordPress Theme
At just $19, this is one of the best WordPress themes for news websites that won’t break the bank. Offering 24/7 support, it comes with useful features like an integrated contact form plus the option for Mailchimp newsletters. There are interesting features like photo color changes as the user scrolls.
11. Bayan – Newspaper & Magazine WordPress Theme
With more than 10 slider layouts, you can edit the page as you go – ensuring that your site constantly feels fresh for return visitors. Widgets like recent posts and popular posts are all included, which are helpful ways to ensure ‘old’ content isn’t forgotten as soon as it leaves the homepage.
12. Liv – A Newspaper WordPress Blog Theme
With a magazine feel, this template may not be the best option for breaking news but its aesthetically pleasing design will help keep evergreen content easily accessible to readers. More than 800 Google fonts are included so you won’t be limited in terms of creativity.
13. Fineglobe – Classic Newspaper Theme
This is about as classic as it gets! If you want to simulate a traditional broadsheet newspaper, this is an excellent newspaper theme to choose. You can still have some fun creating your unique style as there are more than 30 modules to create a frontpage layout from and more than 600 fonts.
14. Flash – Newspaper WordPress Theme
This template allows for lots of content to be aggregated in one spot so it will work especially well if you have bitesize stories to share. With the option for a breaking news bar plus various lists which layer over imagery to show the most popular posts or relevant links, there are many tactics to maximize the readership of your content.
15. NewsPaper – News & Magazine WordPress Theme
If, like the Darpan theme previously mentioned, you’re not quite ready to ‘let go’ of print newspapers, this template is a good option for you. Rated highly by users for originality, you can experiment with the font styles if the header selected in the demo is too old school for your tastes.
16. Digiqole – News Magazine WordPress Theme
A very different feel to the previous theme, Digiqole combines highly visual content blocks with bright splashes of color. The layout would work well as a news or a magazine site, or anything in between.
For only $25 it’s one of the cheaper options plus it has collected multiple five-star reviews for a range of topics including flexibility, code quality, customer support, and customizability. The gradient used on the navigation bar also mirrors the design trend widely considered to have been inspired by Instagram’s logo redesign.
17. Read and Digest – Newspaper Theme
This WordPress newspaper theme looks like it belongs on Pinterest. Full-width imagery gives scope for a really eye-catching website, a great option for photo journalists looking to make their imagery a focal point of the news story. It’s fully responsive and social sharing integration is included.
18. PantoGraph – Newspaper Magazine Theme
The people behind PantoGraph have thought of everything. After all, there’s more than 300 pre-built demo pages and more than 100 theme options so it’s a great all-rounder. Once you’ve taken in some of the demos you can easily drag and drop content blocks to make the site fit your needs.
19. Jannah – News Magazine Newspaper BuddyPress AMP
You just need to briefly scroll through the demo homepage to see the wide variety of features the Jannah template has to offer. You can select the size of your content block based on which news articles you would like to feature on any given day, plus include a summary of trending news as well as lists of recent, popular, and most commented stories. The five-star reviews speak for themselves.
20. Woohoo – Multi-Purpose Newspaper for WordPress
Colorful, fast, and easy to navigate – three important qualities of any news website and Woohoo has them all in abundance! The template is also regularly updated so even though it was created in 2016, it’s fully WordPress 5.0 and Gutenberg compatible. Regular improvements and new features mean it’s a great option for a 2020 WordPress news theme.
21. GoodLife – Magazine & Newspaper WordPress Theme
With more than 2,500 downloads, this is a popular theme and many users praise developers for its design quality.
The template fully supports Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) articles which helps pages load quickly on mobile devices – something that can go a long way in decreasing bounce rate. The easy to navigate design makes the WordPress theme a valid option for a wide variety of news outlets.
22. Papr | News Magazine WordPress Theme
With 8 homepage variations, this is another versatile theme – and for $19, it’s one of the cheaper options too. Only created in October 2019, it’s a new contender but it’s collecting plenty of positive reviews already. It’s one to watch for 2020.
23. Zox News – Professional WordPress News & Magazine Theme
Another popular theme, Zox has been downloaded almost 3,500 times so it must be doing something right. This is the sort of theme to select if you have plenty of content to display as it’s packed with many different blocks.
There are more than 800 fonts to choose from too, so the only risk you have with this one is being spoilt by choice! The optional ‘continue reading’ button for mobile devices is a nice touch as it breaks up longer content which otherwise could seem overwhelming.
24. Discussion – News Portal Theme
Clean lines, easy to navigate homepage, and attention-grabbing sliders – Discussion is another WordPress news theme with a lot going for it. This theme is highly praised for the support offered by the team, so it’s a good option for WordPress beginners.
25. Bold News – Magazine & Newspaper
With four different homepages, you can select the template that works best for you. Subtle touches like image movements as you scroll make Bold stand out.
It’s easy to use, colors can be adapted quickly, plus it comes with its own set of business-orientated icons which can be used to visually signpost content themes.
Now, Your Turn!
As you can see, there are plenty of brilliant templates out there to take your news site into 2020! If you’re still on the search for your perfect WordPress news theme 2020, head to ThemeForest and search the full selection. What’s your best WordPress theme for news blogs? Let us know in the comments below!
