The digital age has led to fundamental changes in many industries. However, hardly any other industry has been hit as hard as newspaper publishers.

Reader behaviour is shifting.  This change is also revealed in circulation figures. Advertisements are increasingly shifting from print to virtual media. Social media are achieving importance as a competitor. Against the background of all these trends, the newspaper trade has undertaken fundamental changes in the last ten years.

The information professionals

It is in the nature of their work that information experts use a variety of media. Information services, knowledge managers, research departments, marketing and sales, and many interconnected functional sectors take on information-intensive tasks. Gathering and processing information is an important part of their job.

One can observe both negative and positive trends. More information is accessible. However, it is more spread out, duplicated or can overwhelm consumers with its mass.

The media landscape before the Internet software

Before the advent of the internet, publishers had a stable business model based on a mixture of advertising and subscriptions/sales.

Newspaper publishers generated revenues from the advertising business and the physical sale of products. This allowed them to cover their costs and make a profit. Physical sales and advertisements in different publications accounted for different proportions of sales.

In the case of specialist titles, the majority of sales were attributable to advertising revenue. Numerous trade publications even provided free subscriptions to key companies and individuals to build an attractive audience that would attract more ads.

Representing the wide range of content creators, this white paper will focus primarily on newspapers.

The change in the business model

Some newspapers have only reacted to the digital challenge, others have done pioneering work. As the internet age dawned and consumers shifted from offline to online media, many news producers rushed to quickly publish their content on the internet for free. This should strengthen newspaper brands and increase online advertising revenue.

In this phase, online content was understood more as a supplement to the paid daily newspaper, not as an alternative. With the spread of the Internet and the use of software, the consumption of free online news also increased rapidly. The use of online news content grew so rapidly. So anyone can access news through their computers or smartphone.