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

The Newspaper Publishing Industry 
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Because of freedom of speech, indirect and generic government subsidies are less 
controversial than direct support for individual newspapers. This is why a majority of the 
Member States give preferential tax treatment to newspapers, instead of direct support. 
Another way of indirect support is by committing a large proportion of the government 
advertising budgets to advertising in the printed press, like in Belgium (OECD, 2010). 
The recent economic crisis in the news publishers market made some countries (in particular 
Denmark and Italy) to maintain their subsidies to newspaper publishers instead of abolishing 
the subsidies, as was intended (OECD, 2010). Another factor that enters this debate is the 
funding of public broadcasters: especially government subsidies for online public service 
broadcasters’ content is seen by some newspaper publishers and other commercial media 
organisations to compete directly with online content of commercial news providers, and is 
therefore considered to distort the newspaper market (ENPA). This debate is most pronounced 
in the UK, Germany and also the European Commission has started the discussion by 
reviewing state aid to broadcasters at the EU level.
5.4 Conclusion 
Contrary to Public Service Broadcasting newspaper publishing is generally seen as a private, 
market driven sector. Nevertheless quite some Member States have special mechanisms to 
support newspaper reading, or diversity and innovation in the newspaper publishing sector. 
Some also have specific legal limitations on concentration and crossmedia ownership for 
newspaper publishers. In the context of increased competition between news providers, some 
of these limitations have been lifted in recent years, or have been reconsidered to make them 
more ‘technology neutral’.
Although media policies are generally considered to fall within the competence of Member 
States’, there are also some issues, in which the European Commission plays a role. This 
concerns in particular the harmonization of copyright laws and the development of easier and 
more effective ways to implement fair copyright regimes and to negotiate copyright licence 
deals between stakeholders. 
Other issues with relevance across Europe, are the development of effective policies to 
maintain and improve the quality and diversity of news output and critical monitoring of the 
role of large, online (US) news aggregators in aggregating news from other news sources and 
in framing access to news for consumers.
Many of these issues will have to be considered in the context of a news market in which not 
only newspaper publishers, but also broadcasters and internet only news providers operate. 
Even though complete convergence of the different media is not likely to happen, all different 
news providers are increasingly involved in interwoven en overlapping news producing 
activities and it makes sense to monitor and judge the quantity, quality, diversity, accessibility 
and economic growth potential of news, by taking into account all relevant news platforms, 
and not only those produced by legacy newspaper publishers.

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