News media in the struggle for survival

Ira Solomonova, editor of the World Press section of the online magazine Slon Magazine, today published interesting reflections on the present and future of news media, relying on information obtained from foreign sources.



Anyway, the last decade was not sweet for news media - only in the USA over the past ten years have newsmen lost almost two thirds of the revenue from advertising. And this is no less than 30 billion dollars. But the worst thing is that every year companies are forced to reduce the staff of journalists in order to reduce costs for employees and stay afloat in difficult times. The tendency is sad that investors are no longer interested in investing their money in news media. Recent big deals like buying Business Insider and BuzzFeed are rare, not the rule. According to forecasts of the publication Economist, advertising revenue in print media will continue to decrease, as for the digital media, advertiser prices will decrease due to the huge competition in the industry.



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

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Revenue from advertising media and the number of journalists.

Source: Newspaper Association of America, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Pew, The Economist.



First, you can make the news paid, but this method is not as effective as it would be desirable for digital publications, 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, this model limits the potential of publications. According to the research of analyst Jim Christian, the average American spends less than four minutes on the site of one 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 has grown by 11%. There are many ways to increase revenues from it: post it taking into account the specifics of the site, offer users a free subscription with viewing ads, create “native” ads. It is also likely that content with a narrow specialization may be the key to success.