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

The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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Amazon introduced the so called Kindle singles for its Kindle e-readers and recently made 
these also available for the iPad. Kindle singles will typically run to between 5,000 and 
30,000 words, too long for a magazine article and too short for a book, but exactly long 
enough for more in-depth journalistic stories. 
Social networks 
The past five years, social networks like Facebook and Twitter have functioned as interesting 
networks for the dissemination of news and information. During breaking news events and 
revolutions, Twitter has provided people the tools to communicate fast and easy. When 
something happens a lot of information, especially pictures and video, comes from people that 
are eye-witnesses or victims, and often faster and closer to the spot than the news reporters 
from traditional news publishers. Major examples have been the bombings in the London tube 
(2005), the post election events in Iran (2010) and during the so-called Arab Spring or 
revolutions in the Middle East (2011) and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan (2011). 
Localising, mobilising, distributing information and mapping situations have become much 
easier. Many journalists are using Twitter as a source of information and a means to contact 
sources. Social networks have also become a new and much used way to distribute and share 
news.
2.5 Conclusion 
This chapter has shown that the situation in the newspaper sector is complex and multifaceted 
in nature. Publishers of print news media are facing a decline in advertising income due to the 
economic crisis and to the – more structural - shift from a significant share of advertisers to 
the internet. At the same time they also face a decline in circulation and readership and 
increased competition from broadcast and online news providers, which again reinforces 
declining advertising revenues for their print products. However, the urgency of the situation 
varies per country. Newspaper publishers in countries which rely to a large extent on 
advertising income are hit hardest. Compared to the US, the European market is still relatively 
strong, because US newspapers rely to a larger extent on advertising revenues and many 
newspapers are in the hands of private equity funds, whose shares are traded on the stock 
markets, whereas in Europe many newspapers are private or family businesses and many still 
make profits, though much less than in previous decades. 
Due to digitization, convergence and the internet, news has increasingly become a merit good; 
it is supposed to be needed by society, but consumers’ willingness to pay for online news is 
low. News is everywhere and news producers have lost their exclusive role as news providers. 
In response newspaper publishers have attempted to renew their print newspapers, increased 
their sales and marketing efforts and developed additional products and services for their 
readers. The figures on the revenues for the print product and the internet product in this 
chapter have shown that the decrease in print revenues has not yet been compensated by the 
increase in digital revenues. In the next chapter, we will look more closely at how internet and 
digitization have affected all the different stages of the value network and undermined 
traditional business models in the newspaper publishing sector. 

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