Competitive pressure and profitability of newspaper publishing in 12 European countries

Political Journalism Content in a New Era: The Case of Finnish Newspapers, 1995–2015

“…Even more so, the findings point at the growing impact of both technology and markets. Since the mid-2000s, they have caused increasing trouble for newspapers, particularly tabloids (Björkroth and Grönlund, 2018; Kivioja, 2018). Dwindling resources, and the rise of online reporting that has made differentiation in print more difficult and pushed new innovations in political journalism more strongly to the Internet (Väliverronen, 2017), are likely to have contributed to the unifying trend in print.…”

“…Newspapers have been further encumbered by the rise of social media and online news (Grundström, 2020). Although newspapers' readership remains high in international comparison and their financial situation is less dire than in many other European countries (Björkroth and Grönlund, 2018), they have increasingly resorted to lay-offs, newsroom mergers, and other reforms in the 2010s (Grundström, 2020).…”

“…In recent years, financial pressures have mounted, and political journalists’ long-standing place of prestige in newsrooms (Kantola, 2013) and distinctive ways of working have been increasingly scrutinized by media managers (Grönvall, 2015). Although the press fares better financially in Finland than in many other parts of Europe (Björkroth and Grönlund, 2018), dwindling readerships and advertising income have led to lay-offs and organizational reforms (e.g. Grundström, 2020, 8–10), from which political journalists are no longer exempt (Väliverronen, 2017).…”

Political economy of media: An income-expense analysis of state aids to Iranian newspapers

“…The print newspaper has been one of the oldest sectors of the contemporary media landscape (Boczkowski, 2004;Kumar et al, 2015;Vasundara & Ravi, 2016). It was also the most profitable of all media industries until current century and one of the most profitable of all manufacturing industries (Picard, 2003, p. 109), despite the fact that today the industry faces a dramatic fall in profitability and publishers of print news media witness a decline in their advertising income due to the economic crisis (Björkroth & Grönlund, 2018) as well as emergence and popularity of digital media and accordingly a structural shift of a significant share of advertisers to the internet (Björkroth & Grönlund, 2018;Khajeheian, 2016;Leurdijk et al, 2012;Oliver, 2018;Picard, 2008). Many new sources of news and commentary are available (Khajeheian et al, 2018) and the Internet has enabled the broader dissemination of news and analysis for customers, as well as a source of receiving consumption data and analysis of consumers' behaviors for the media owners (Sharifi et al, 2019;Nemati & Khajeheian, 2018).…”

Strategic challenges of newspaper publishing in an international perspective

“…The most recent evidence is not conclusive in this respect. Although in several highly developed economies, the closure of entire newspaper operations or the cessation of the print version was reported (e.g., Kolo & Weichert, 2014; Picard, 2017); in equally developed contexts, newspaper publishing is still profitable (e.g., Björkroth & Grönlund, 2018; Edge, 2019; Picard, 2017). However, that does not mean very much.…”