Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries: The Newspaper Publishing Industry

Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
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It is interesting to compare traditional news publishers’ online offer with the news offer of the 
new, internet only news publishers and aggregators and with the news offers available on the 
iPad as the most recent innovation in the news publishing market. Figure 14 shows the 
functionalities on news websites of newspapers, broadcasters, new news providers and on 
iPad applications. While many news providers offer search functionalities, an archive and 
RSS feeds, functionalities like a forum, tagclouds and widgets are offered less frequently.
Figure 14: Online functionalities on news websites
Source: Slot, Ruhe, & Frissen, Nieuws Online, 2011b. 
In general, traditional news providers increasingly exploit the potential of the internet and 
social media. They add blogs and video to their websites (see for an overview of online 
content on news sites Figure 15). Also, people are regularly invited to take photos or provide 
eyewitness accounts of news events (Bakker & Pantti, 2009). Increasingly, news providers 
can be followed on social media. However, there still are differences between the online 
services of traditional newspapers and the 'new', internet-only, news providers (or ‘pure 
internet players’ as they are also sometimes called). Whereas most traditional news providers 
can be characterized as providers of mainstream, professionally produced news with some 
additional options for user interaction, many ‘new’ news publishers' websites are 
predominantly designed as a platform where non-professionals are the main contributors and 
where users share or discuss news (Slot, Ruhe, & Frissen, Nieuws Online, 2011b). Users can 
personalise news websites, post content or share news messages via other social media. They 
can vote on content, articles or videos and recommend content to other users (see Figure 16
). 
Examples are news sites such as the Huffington Post where celebrities but also ordinary users 
contribute blogs and which provide ample space for user comments to the news. Other 
examples are the French Rue89 and Mediapart, or the popular Dutch news site NU.nl which 
obtains a considerable part of its content from its users (see for more information the Sanoma 
case study in Appendix B).

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