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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Finally, citizens have many more options to find information, to customize their news and 
information offer according to their own preferences and to share and comment upon news 
items. From being merely consumers at the end of the value chain, ,many consumers now also 
contribute actively to different phases in the news value chain by distributing and sharing 
news, adding information and pictures on all kind of subjects, responding with their 
knowledge to crowd sourcing information requests, interactive maps, investigations, twitter 
feeds, Facebook pages, picture galleries and numerous others news formats. 
3.3 
Impact of digitization and internet on business and revenue models 
Despite the economic pressures many newspaper publishers still make a profit (although far 
less than in the 1990s). Traditionally, newspaper companies overall have had relatively high 
(two-digit) profit margins compared to other industries (Boczkowski, 2005; OECD, 2010). 
However, due to the recent economic downturn, profit margins are falling rapidly. It is to be 
expected that profit margins for newspaper publishers will never reach the high numbers of 
earlier decades again (OECD, 2010; Eurostat). 
The development of mass media and economies of scale at first made newspapers cheaper. 
The more people read a newspaper, the less money the newspaper costs. But recently, 
declining readership and advertising income has caused newspaper prices to rise. Especially 
in countries where a large amount of people have a subscription, fewer readers means higher 
prices for newspaper delivery. The OECD states that available data indicate that newspapers 
have also significantly increased their advertisement prices (OECD, 2010).
Most news publishers have not yet developed working business models for their online news 
and many newspaper publishers are still experimenting with different business models. Some 
newspapers are able to generate revenues online from subscriptions and sales, but most online 
news services rely mainly on advertising. Other models that are tried out are for instance 
voluntary donations, licensing content to other providers, selling customer data and selling 
goods and services to the audience. 
However, in the first decade of the 21
st
century, print remains the main revenue driver for 
newspaper publishers (PwC and Wilkofsky Gruen Associates, 2011). Digital advertising 
accounted for 2% of the global spending on newspapers in 2005, rising only to 4% in 2010 
(Table 12). At the same time the advertising revenues for print are declining, while 
advertising revenues for digital are rising, except between 2009 when digital revenues 
dropped as well.