What Ails Newspaper Business Model?

To fix a problem, one first must define the problem correctly. Some might argue the problem for newspapers is "declining readership." Others might argue it is the existence of Internet alternatives which are the problem.

But a new book published by Oxford University essentially argues "too much reliance on advertising" is the problem newspapers in some countries face. The study, commissioned by the Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, examined newspaper industries in several countries, including the US, UK, Germany and Brazil.

In many countries where online activity is high, including Scandinavia and Germany, newspapers are still faring well, with titles typically generating 50 percent of revenues from advertising.

The U.S. newspaper industry, which has generated more than 80 percent of its income from advertisements, is today in a much more serious crisis than its counterparts in Germany and Finland, where advertising typically constitutes about 50 percent of total revenues, Reuters suggests.

To be sure, there probably are numerous reasons why newspapers are in trouble. See http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-reasons-why-newspapers-are-failing for one view on what the problems are.

But it might seem somewhat silly to suggest that excessive reliance on advertising is the problem. Advertising only works when users already have ratified their appetite for consuming content in a particular venue. To argue "too much advertising" is the problem, or more accurately, that declining advertising now is the problem, sort of mistakes a symptom for a cause.

In the United Kindgom and the United States, where advertising accounts for a larger proportion of revenues, the picture is worse, but could be explained by a cyclical advertising recession which has seen spend fall dramatically in recent years, the study suggests.

That ignores the fact that readership has been falling for decades. Falling readership leads to lower ad spending and lower ad rates, which leads to lower revenue. But those problems are directly related to the availability of other channels that have more user engagement. People have shifted attention to other media formats.

The book challenges the conventional wisdom that the Internet has undermined business models by claiming there is no correlation between Internet usage and newspaper profitability. Up to a point, that is undoubtedly true. But likely only up to a point. To be sure, newspaper readership has been declining for decades, including the period before the advent of easily-consumable Internet news.

But advertising is shifting throughout the media world, and it might be wishful thinking to assert that the growing use of online channels is not directly responsible for a shift of growing amounts of advertising.

To be fair, one might argue that the researchers mostly are saying there should be a better balance between end user payments and ad support. That's fair enough, but anybody who has spent time in print publishing would agree that it is tough to get large numbers of readers to pay very much for the ability to read publications. The reason advertising historically has been important in the publishing business is precisely that readers do not necessarily "value" print content all that highly.

http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/Changing_Business_of_Journalism_Exec_Summary.pdf

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/21/british-newspapers-advertising-revenue