Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a sovereign country in South Asia. With a population exceeding 180 million people, it is the sixth most populous country in the world. In 1947 only four major Muslim-owned newspapers existed in the area now called Pakistan: Pakistan Times, Zamindar, Nawa-i-Waqt, and Civil and Military Gazette. A number of Muslim papers moved to Pakistan, including Dawn, which began publishing daily in Karachi in 1947, the Morning News, and the Urdu-language dailies Jang and Anjam. By the early 2000s, 1,500 newspapers and journals existed in Pakistan.
The Pakistan Newspapers Society, a precursor to the APNS, was established in 1950, primarily due to the efforts of the Hameed Nizami, Altaf Hussain, and Hamid Mahmood. In the year 1953, All Pakistan Newspapers Society was formed by merging the existing groups of publishers. The headquarters were established in Karachi, where it continues to function. Pakistan newspapers, In the early twenty-first century, the amount of print media in Pakistan declined precipitously while total circulation increased. From 1994 to 1997, the total number of daily, monthly, and other publications increased from 3,242 to 4,455 but had dropped to just 945 by 2003 with most of the decline occurring in the Punjab Province. Newspapers and magazines are published in 11 languages; most in Urdu and Sindhi, but English-language publications are numerous.