The Bricks That Build the Clicks: Newsroom Investments and Newspaper Online Performance

As the world embraces the Internet for media consumption, the concept of a hybrid newspaper—a printed newspaper with a companion Web site—is becoming more prevalent. Many hope that online advertising revenue (OAR) will help newspapers make up for losses in print (offline) revenue. However, there is little research that has empirically investigated whether and how investment in the “bricks” (i.e., the newsroom staff and resources that produce news content) will help to build “clicks” (i.e., more online visitors and, subsequently, OAR). This article examines the issue via an econometric analysis of 12 years of longitudinal data from a hybrid newspaper. The results show that the basic success of the clicks model depends on the investment in the bricks of the newspaper (i.e., its newsroom). Specifically, although news gathering is a very expensive part of the news business, it is also a creator of value and directly brings in OAR in addition to print advertising revenue. Therefore, as newspapers seek to capture more OAR, they may need to increase, rather than decrease, investment levels in the newsroom.     

The community model of content management: A case study of the music industry

Abstract

In 450 years of existence, the written press has never faced a change with the intensity and consequences as those of the Internet. The decision of going online represents a whole set of opportunities and threats that publishers must carefully weigh. Once they have made the step, newspapers find themselves in a completely different competitive environment. They deal with different competitors, business models, customers and patterns of consumption. The present study explores such patterns of consumption by using data from 15 Spanish newspapers, covering time periods from 2 to 20 months. Characteristics of the printed newspapers and general patterns of the Internet are also analyzed in order to isolate the factors that enable an Internet newspaper to achieve a high level of readership. The findings indicate that reading patterns on the Internet strongly differ from those in the physical world, particularly when we consider weekday versus weekend circulation. The use of the newspaper is different too: reading of Internet newspapers is usually more functional and goal oriented, as indicated by the small number of pages read per visit. These and other results can provide publishers with valuable insights to understand this new frontier in the history of journalism.     

What Drives Media Bias? New Evidence From Recent Newspaper Closures

With the advent of the Internet, many U.S. metropolitan areas have seen newspaper closures due to declining revenues. This provides the researcher with an opportunity to analyze the microeconomic sources of media bias. This article uses a large panel dataset of newspaper archives for 99 newspapers over 240 months (1990–2009). The author found that, after controlling for the unemployment rate, the change in unemployment rate, and the political preferences of surrounding metropolitan area, conservative newspapers report 17.4% more unemployment news when the President is a Democrat rather than a Republican, before the closure of a rival newspaper in the same media market. This effect is 12.8% for liberal newspapers. After the closure, these numbers are 3.5% and 1.1%, respectively. This moderation of media bias after closure of a rival newspaper is robust to the inclusion of newspaper size, newspaper fixed-effects or metropolitan area fixed-effects as controls. The author also found that newspapers in smaller metropolitan areas have a larger moderation in their bias. Findings provide support for theories in which media bias is demand-driven, as surviving newspapers aim to increase their sales by gaining the former readers of a closed newspaper in the same media market.     

Young adults and everyday-life information: The role of news media

There is a paucity of research examining the everyday-life information seeking of young people, especially investigating the role that the news media has in providing information to young people for use in their everyday lives. A qualitative, interpretivist approach is adopted, involving 34 students, ages 18 to 25, from an Australian university. First, 20 students were interviewed about their news seeking (including topics and sources). Then 14 students participated in verbal protocol analysis, which involved a series of tasks concerning online and print newspapers. Lastly, students were interviewed about how they sought everyday-life information and whether they thought that they had incidentally acquired or encountered information on everyday-life topics in online or print newspapers in the recent past. Findings indicated that, contrary to expectations, traditional print media still played a role for young people, and social media were perceived as important for communication with friends, rather than for news gathering. Purposeful information seeking was more likely to occur online, but both print and online newspapers retained an incidental role in providing information to students for their everyday lives. Participants used a range of media to suit their particular needs and purposes. Thus, access to a wide variety of sources is important for everyday-life information seeking (ELIS) by young people.     

Still the Same?

This article analyses whether a specific news event is reported differently online compared to print newspapers. The question is hardly new but has increased in importance as more readers pass from print newspapers to online news. The conditions of news selection and production are discussed departing from the theories of market-driven journalism and media logic, and are related to aspects of audience needs and gratifications, as well as professional norms and standards. A content analysis of news reporting during the 2010 Swedish election campaign reveals no significant differences between how major newspapers reported the aspects, issues and actors online compared to in print. Individuals using online news received the same information about the election campaign as those reading the print paper, which indicates a displacing rather than complementary effect of online journalism on print journalism.     

Bouncing off the Paywall – Understanding Misalignments Between Local Newspaper Value Propositions and Audience Responses

ABSTRACT

Declining advertising revenue and print copy sales have propelled extensive paywall experiments in local newspapers to generate new revenue and fund local journalism. The success of these experiments is ultimately depending on whether or not they deliver the value that customers require. This article studies local newspapers’ potential to build successful paywalls by conducting a two-sided analysis of paywall value propositions and local news audiences’ responses to these value propositions. Drawing on mixed methods – in-depth interviews with 20 newspaper managers and a national survey (N = 1586) among local newspaper audiences – our study identifies a major gap between intended value of paywalls and customer value perception and behavior. These are misalignments between the intended attractiveness of paywalled content and audience attitude toward this content, and misalignments between access to paywalled content and use. Local newspapers’ offerings are particularly misaligned with younger, lower income and lower news interest customers. When these groups hit a paywall, they most likely bounce off.     

The Impact of Digital Technology on the Distribution Value Chain Model of Independent Feature Films in the UK

In response to the newspaper crisis, U.S. newspapers are seeking new business models for their online operation, but often ignore non-local readers who constitute a non-traditional niche audience with market potential. This study attempts to expand the understanding of the U.S. online newspaper readership in the dual-geographic market by empirically comparing local and long-distance users on demographic characteristics, online behavior, and satisfaction level with the newspaper site. Utilizing a dataset containing 28 newspaper Web sites' 25,964 visitors, this study performed a large-scale, in-depth analysis of online newspapers' long-distance readership unseen in previous research. Results show that more than one fourth of these newspaper sites' online users reside outside the print market. Most long-distance users have personal ties with the geographic area associated with the newspaper. Compared with local users, long-distance users tend to be male, older, better educated, and with a higher income. They are more likely to obtain local sports information from the site, but are less likely to visit the classifieds areas of the site. They also tend to be more loyal to and satisfied with the newspaper site. Newspapers should perceive long-distance users as a potential audience segment rather than an inconvenient truth when developing content, pricing, and marketing strategies.     

ONLINE FEATURE JOURNALISM

Although online journalism is still dominated by breaking news coverage, new genres are emerging that differentiate it more and more from old media journalism. This article explores the emergence of feature journalism in online newspapers. Through comparative qualitative text analysis of feature journalism in the US online newspaper palmbeachpost.com and the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no, two widely different approaches to the production of feature journalism on the Web are uncovered and a critical perspective on the remediation of journalistic genres in online newspapers is elaborated. The analysis shows that both these approaches display a clash between discourses of traditional feature journalism and discourses of online communication. It further reveals that genre development in online journalism is a complex process marked by contradictions and inconsistencies and that online newsrooms are struggling to find solutions on how to differentiate online journalism from old media journalism.     

Free Newspapers in the United States: Alive and Kicking

Free newspapers are a substantial segment of the U.S. newspaper industry, as well as an under-studied topic within media research. This study considers the economic health of free newspapers in the United States and whether they face a dire future given their heavy reliance on advertising, a source of revenue that has been in decline for newspapers. One question guiding this research is whether free newspapers face two options: continue producing free content by relying on advertising (in addition to other revenue sources), or abandon the advertising-based business model. Seven research questions address a number of issues, such as whether free newspapers are profitable, if decision-makers are considering changing their business model, whether they are seeking alternative sources of revenue, whether reader engagement is connected to the price, or a lack of one, of a newspaper, and whether decision-makers are optimistic or pessimistic about the future of their industry. A Web-based survey asked decision-makers at free newspapers in the United States to respond to questions related to the health and future of their newspaper or newspapers. This survey was complemented by in-depth interviews with publishers of four different types of free newspapers in Texas. The study concludes by suggesting free newspapers are not only viable but in many markets they are thriving. Sweeping generalizations (often seen in industry discourse) about the future of print newspapers can be misleading. This study contributes a reality check and calls for further research on the economics of print media in the digital era.     

Second Generation Net News: Interactivity and Information Accessibility in the Online Environment

This study assesses the ways in which local television news operations and major metropolitan newspapers in the top 40 U.S. media markets are making information accessible and structuring interactive experiences online as the industry transitions into a third generation of Internet news. As Net news approaches its first decade of existence, online news sites are assumed to be evolving from a noninteractive, passive model of information delivery into an environment of increased immediacy, content richness, and user control. To investigate this question, a content analysis was performed in 2 waves, once during fall 1998 and again during fall 2000. For comparative purposes, differences across years are examined. In addition, the efforts of local television news sites are contrasted with the online activities of dominant newspaper sites, which have assumed a commanding lead in building a local online audience. The analysis argues for valuing Net news sites less from a profit-loss standpoint and more for the nonmonetary contributions they make in relation to the broader news mission, namely, enhanced coverage, brand loyalty, and news credibility.     

TOWARDS A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON LOCATING ONLINE NEWS IN THE NEWS ECOLOGY

As, historically, has been common with newly emergent media, the World Wide Web in the mid-1990s was greeted with a discourse of revolutionary impacts, premised on a technological logic of development. In the case of news, the Web was expected to drive a more democratic, transparent and accountable journalism. This article argues that the application of a strong historical perspective to scholarship on online news is necessary to gauge the depth of any changes from and the strength of continuity with print and broadcast news. It examines the historical development of mass media and of journalism in the context of industrial capitalism to trace the emergence of the ‘news ecology’ that permeates print, broadcast and, now, online media. It examines this through a sample of websites maintained by Irish national and local newspapers, and the country's public service broadcaster, between 1994 and 2010.     

Agenda-setting and the internet: The intermedia influence of internet bulletin boards on newspaper coverage of the 2000 general election in South Korea

The purpose of this study was to explore the intermedia influence of the Internet on traditional news media. Accordingly, this study examined the influence of Internet bulletin boards on newspaper coverage of the 2000 general election in South Korea at both first and second levels of agenda-setting through content analyses of major newspapers and the Internet bulletin boards during the campaign. Results of cross-lagged correlation analyses showed that newspapers influenced Internet bulletin boards at the first level of agenda-setting. Additionally, at the second level of agenda-setting, the influence of Internet bulletin boards on newspapers was found. Although reciprocity appeared in a few time spans, the results imply that the Internet funnels and leads public opinion as well as affecting the coverage of other media.     

Promise and Reality: The Integration of Print and Online Versions of Major Metropolitan Newspapers

Newspapers that seek first-mover advantage too often have expended financial capital and personnel resources on new media initiatives without fully appreciating the obstacles or the potential outcomes, an approach that may be understandable in an increasingly competitive marketplace fueled by the explosive growth of the Internet. Newspaper editors still question whether and how to integrate their Internet editions into existing newsrooms in hopes of leveraging the strengths of each. A survey of 63 major metropolitan U.S. newspaper editors showed that these managers have a high level of commitment to integration. In addition, a statistically significant relationship was found between multiple procedural or policy factors and management perception that integration had met management objectives. If integration between the newspaper and its online service is the desired outcome, the most important factors appear to include having a partnership with other media, instituting a converged news desk that handles stories regardless of medium or distribution method, having management commitment to integration, equalizing perceptions of status between newspaper workers and online workers, empowering online staff to actively participate in planning meetings, utilizing the online service for breaking news that occurs off-publication cycle, and encouraging print-side staff members to generate content for exclusive use online.     

Demystifying the demand relationship between online and print products under one newspaper brand: the case of Taiwan and the emergence of a universal pattern

This study uncovers a universal pattern regarding the oft-misunderstood demand relationship between online and print products under one newspaper brand. Growing from the portfolio management perspective and building on previous research conducted in the US and Hong Kong, this study examines the newspaper market in Taiwan. Secondary analysis of survey data collected from 7706 Web users confirmed that: (1) the print edition attains a much higher penetration relative to its online counterpart, suggesting that more people would rather consume the print edition over free Web offerings; and (2) compared with the general public, readers of the online edition were more, not less, likely to read the same newspaper's print edition. Such counter-intuitive findings carry important theoretical and managerial implications regarding the management of multiple product offerings under one newspaper brand.     

A Critique of Internet Polls as Symbolic Representation and Pseudo-Events

The Internet continues to grow as an information and entertainment medium. Internet growth has implications for the news industry. Twenty-four hour news networks such as CNN and MSNBC regularly encourage viewers of their television programs to visit their Web sites. While visiting news Web sites, visitors are invited to participate in opinion polls. Unfortunately, these online opinion polls are not scientific and have little real news value. In spite of these limitations, news Web sites' Internet polls are often treated as serious topics in broadcast news discussions. This article examines media organizations' Internet online polls and critiques them as instances of symbolic representation and pseudo-events that have arisen largely out of the integration of print, broadcast, and Internet media.     

危机环境下的报纸版式变革

当前,世界报业面临网络媒体冲击和世界经济危机双重打击。在应变中,报纸版面设计出现一些新的趋势,其主要表现为:版面形式模仿和融合网络媒体特点,报纸开张小型化,广告对版面的支配力更强等等。这些改变并未能深层次地解决报纸生存发展的困境,反而暴露出报纸内部职业原则的动摇,而这才是报业面临的最深刻、最致命的危机。     

The Economic Advantage of Being the “Voice of the Majority”

This article analyzes price competition in a duopolistic newspaper industry, where politically differentiated newspapers compete in 2 distinct markets: circulation and advertising. Assuming that 1 of the newspapers represents the “voice of the majority,” the theory of the circulation spiral is investigated and whether the interdependence between newspapers' demands in the circulation and advertising markets favors the majority's newspaper to the detriment of the minority's newspaper is investigated.     

网络媒体竞争态势分析(上)

网络媒体的出现 ,对传统媒体的传播模式、经营模式都造成巨大冲击。本文采用企业战略研究中常用的SWOT分析工具 ,分析了我国媒体产业的关键成功因素即政策管制、媒体规模与人才等 ,比较了广播、电视、报刊及网络媒体的竞争力。在此基础上 ,详细解析了网络媒体的优劣势 ,并提出了发展对策     

ONLINE NEWS USERS’ SENSE OF COMMUNITY

The idea of geography is fundamental to local newspapers, both in the sense of community news and news from a community perspective. It has been suggested that “geography is dead.” This idea was tested through a self-administered mail survey of a sample of adults living in Maricopa County, Arizona, using geographic and online senses of community measures to determine the importance of geography in today's Internet-rich environment and determine if geography is really “dead.” The analysis focused on evaluating the mean sense of community measures among groups, and examining the use of newspaper weblogs in light of the print newspaper's coverage of a particular geographic area. Results rebuff suggestions that geography is “dead” and indicate that respondents are still attached to their geographic communities. In the struggle to find new models of journalism, newspapers must find a way to remain geographically relevant in print and on the Web.     

Elemental Forms

This paper considers the way the nineteenth-century newspaper was oriented towards information. Despite their political differences, nineteenth-century newspapers were often discussed as if they were universal, with a paper for every segment of society. My argument is that this apparent universality, where the newspaper was figured as a print genre potentially open to all, laid the foundations for the emergence of the popular press. The paper is in two parts. The first considers the nineteenth-century newspaper as a genre, arguing that its periodicity enabled it to serve as a perfect medium, passing on content derived from elsewhere. The second explores the way information was conceived in the period. By looking at the way the newspaper drew upon, represented, and distributed information, it is possible to understand how it functioned as material media. In conclusion, I look at the way the nineteenth-century newspaper is changed through digitization today. When scholars access nineteenth-century newspapers through digital resources, they engage with a different material media that, in turn, reconfigures the source material. Such encounters foreground the importance of genre while providing new opportunities for its study.