Internal reorganisation, research and new technologies are the most important factors that need to be tackled to meet future demands of the newspaper industry, according to a just released report by Ifra, the world's leading association for newspaper and media publishing. Two-third of the newspaper industry respondents interviewed by Ifra felt so.
Technical innovation was considered to be important by the vast majority of respondents. Fifty-two per cent of the respondents reported that their company was addressing innovation by cooperating with other companies in research and development, while 35 per cent address it with strategic alliances.
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, launched in March this year. The three-year "Where News?" project is being funded with more than a million Euro, signalling how seriously the association's 3000 member media houses are taking the initiative.
Ninety-five per cent of publishers indicated that technical innovation was very important or important for the newspaper industry but only 82 per cent believed it was important for their company. Half the publishers reported that their company was addressing innovation by cooperating with other companies in research and development and one third indicated they were addressing innovation through strategic alliances.
Newspaper publishers ranked broadband home and mobile services, CRM systems, editorial management systems, and flexible mobile displays as the technologies they believed would play the most important role in the development of their businesses in the next five years. Publishers had, however, ranked mobile devices and services as the least important revenue source not only currently but also for the future.
These two contradictory results, the Ifra report felt, might reveal the publishers' uncertainty about the future role of mobile devices as information channel. Further, the fact that both broadband home and broadband mobile are ranked high might mean that publishers expect them to merge.
The report says there is a shift in the way newspaper publishing companies think: they are starting to adapt their business model to the market changes, trying to source more revenues from advertising than from circulation. Companies are also trying to add to the traditional printed newspapers model a new model for the online business. However, looking at the figures, this business model development can be identified only in the northern countries such as Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands or in the US. The focus on speed does not seem to be present in the "way of thinking" yet.
The main revenue stream for newspaper publishers still comes from the traditional printed newspaper business. However, the number of respondents expecting a contribution to the revenue stream from Internet activities has been on the rise, even though the main source expected to contribute remains advertising. Indian companies in particular, the reported noted, expected revenue streams coming from Internet operations in which advertising plays the major role. The Internet, which is ranked sixth as a source of revenue stream currently, will emerge as the second most revenue earner for newspaper companies both in developed and developing countries.
