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

3.2.3 Distribution 
By publishing news online, it is theoretically distributed or made available for anyone with 
access to an internet connection. There are no added costs for physical transport and delivery 
and therefore online distribution costs are significantly lower than the distribution of physical 
content (Boczkowski, 2005). There are still costs involved for connections to the network, for 
server and network capacity, and for maintaining and operating content management systems. 
Legacy newspaper publishers, for the time being, have to bear both costs for physical as well 
as for online distribution. In the early 2000’s newspapers experimented with printing on 
demand models, but so far these do not seem to have not taken off on a large scale. A paper-
less future has often been predicted, but so far there have only been a couple of newspapers 
which have completely abandoned the print newspaper and completely shifted to digital 
distribution. 
27
See 
http://paidcontent.org/table/comparing-the-new-aggregators
(consulted on December 5
th
2011) for a 
useful comparison between a number of new aggregations apps or next generation RSS feeds as they are 
sometimes called. 

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Statistical, Ecosystems and Competitiveness Analysis of the Media and Content Industries 
60
 
3.2.4 Consumption 
The availability of and access to news sources has expanded drastically since the widespread 
diffusion of computers and internet. In addition to newspapers, television and radio news, 
consumers can also access news content online through websites, news apps on mobile 
phones and tablets and online social networks. Online news has become a popular source of 
news and the internet has overtaken newspapers in popularity as a news source (see Figure 
19).