News media fighting for survival

Ira Solomonova, editor of the World Press section of the online edition of Slon Magazine, today published amusing thoughts about the present and future of news media, relying on information received from foreign sources.

Like it or not, the last decade was unsweetened for news media - only in the USA over the past ten years, newsmen have lost almost two-thirds of the income from advertisements. And this is no less than 30 billion dollars. But the worst part is that every year companies are forced to reduce the staff of journalists in order to reduce employee costs and stay afloat in difficult times. The trend is sad that investors seem no longer interested in investing in news media. Recent major deals such as the purchase of Business Insider and BuzzFeed are rare and not the rule. According to the forecasts of the Economist, advertising revenue in print media will continue to decrease, as for digital publications, advertisers' prices will decrease due to enormous competition in the industry.

So, let's look at what news media can do in the struggle for a place in the sun.



Revenues of news media from advertising and the number of journalists.
Source: Newspaper Association of America, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Pew, The Economist.

Firstly, you can make the news paid, but this method is not as effective as digital publications would like, because the reader is often content with free news content, and then just leaves the site. As for the sale of individual articles, according to experts, such a model limits the potential of publications. According to research by analyst Jim Chrysholm, the average American spends less than four minutes on the site of a newsman.

At the moment, online advertising is the main hope of most publications. If we compare the 2007th and 2014th years, the revenue from online advertising grew by 11%. There are many ways to increase revenue from it: place it taking into account the specifics of the site, offer users a free subscription to view ads, create “native” ads. It is also likely that content with a special focus can be the key to success.