More than two-thirds of the newspaper companies worldwide expect to remain a predominantly newspaper publisher in the near future, according to a just released report by Ifra, the world's leading association for newspaper and media publishing.
When questioned if they perceive their company to be predominantly a newspaper publisher, 69 per cent of the respondents to a survey conducted by Ifra answered yes. The remaining 31 per cent of the respondents answered negatively, partly because their companies were also involved in the television industry – such as the Standard Group in Kenya – or because they consider themselves to be a media company providing not only news but also entertainment – such as News Limited in Australia.
Forty-eight per cent of the respondents perceived their company to be bigger than other newspaper publishers in their market, 21 per cent indicated they were about the same size as other publishers, and 31 per cent indicated they were smaller.
These findings have been reported in Business Models of Newspaper Publishing Companies, a report published by Germany-based Ifra and is part of the multi-faceted research project Where News: The media futures research initiative which was launched in March this year.
"There is a void of understanding about how people will use media and where they will get their news 10 to 15 years from now, where and how people will be receiving it, where it will come from, where will be the companies that provide it and that provide the technologies behind it," said Ifra CEO Reiner Mittelbach.
"These are not questions that can be answered by small, isolated groups of self-appointed consultants who write about only what is happening today, especially where the global media environment is concerned. It requires authentic and credible research into trends and scenarios. And it requires an incredible depth of participation. Ifra is one of only a few such organisations in the world with the membership and resources to undertake such a task," Mittelbach said.
The three-year "Where News?" project is being funded with more than a million Euro, signalling how serious the association's more than 3000 member media houses are taking the new initiative. Ifra member companies will have access to the project's results at no charge. An international steering group is being assembled consisting of industry experts from Ifra member companies, both publishers and suppliers, supported by a number of external research institutes. The effort officially kicked off at the end of March 2006, and Business Models of Newspaper Publishing Companies is the first of the reports to see the light of day.
The goal of this project was to investigate the current and planned business models of newspaper publishers in order to understand publishers’ expectations regarding the development of their businesses. In the study, 42 publishers and top newspaper company executives worldwide answered e-mail questions as well as face-to-face and telephone interviews through which a more detailed view of business models and plans were gained. Publishers from Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America, Middle East and North America were included. All were members of Ifra and most were from the most important newspapers in their countries.
The results of this study reveal that, in general, newspaper publishing companies are still focused on the traditional printing business. Cost saving is in their focus. In order to create value, it will be useful for them to develop parallel business models based on business opportunities offered by new technologies and to find ways to exploit network relations and speed up their capability to react to and anticipate changes, the report said.
"Newspaper publishing companies, however, are often too anchored to their traditional business and late in recognising and exploiting new opportunities. This is seen in the fact that experimentation is considered to be the least important force playing a role in investment decision making at a time when the dynamism of the media industry requires an entrepreneurial spirit."
Most of the respondents agreed, according to the report, that the editorial and advertising wings of their organisations are the most strategically important units for their business. When looking at the future, they see a clear trend towards more cooperation. Most of the respondents believed that content generation, distribution, and advertising activities will be the areas in which most cooperation develops.
"Targeted advertising is expected to become the main area of cooperation, although advertising is ranked as second most strategically important organisational unit. The editorial department is ranked number one as a strategic organisational unit, but cooperation involving content generation is ranked second. This reveals an unclear operational topic of the companies' strategies and way of thinking," it said.
Related link: www.ifra.com/wherenews
