Newspaper Market Concentration, Competitive Pressure and Financial Performance: The Case of Finland

The Growth of Leading Regional Newspapers

“…The Herfindahl-Hirschman index for circulation (HHI C ) is about 1000, i.e. clearly lower than the corresponding index for advertising revenues (HHI A ), which is about 1500 (Grönlund & Björkroth, 2011). A national level perspective on newspaper markets overlooks many important nuances of competition, such as the regional character of newspaper markets in Finland.…”

“…However, as we know regarding partly advertising financed media, both the audience and the advertisers have alternative channels at their disposal. Grönlund and Björkroth (2011) studied the implications of the substitutability between newspapers and other media for the inter-media competition and found evidence of simultaneously intensified intra-, but especially inter-media competition in the Finnish newspaper markets. With regard to this we should try to elaborate on the differences in conclusions that arise between relating the circulation growth to overall circulation of newspapers and setting the growth in circulation in relation to what seems to be the potential audience within a well-defined geographical area.…”

“…The Finnish press has a strong regional and local focus, although there is a handful of what might be classified as national newspapers. One indicator of the strength of the provincial press is that among the 20 biggest newspapers, measured by circulation, 14 are provincial (Björkroth & Grönlund, 2011).…”

“…Consequently, we can infer whether the leading regional newspapers grow in a declining market. Björkroth and Grönlund (2011) studied how competition and the related, relevant institutional framework had developed in the regionally very concentrated Finnish market for newspaper publishing between 1997 and 2008. The main conclusion was that newspapers had experienced an increasing competitive pressure from other media, with some temporary relief.…”

The earning days are over? Trends in transformation of journalisms in the Nordic countries and Russia – context and visions

“…In the USA, the newspaper economy declined by 34 percent between 2004 and 2009, in the UK with 21 percent; again, Germany and the Nordic states fared better, but expectations are that the decline will spread also to these markets. Job markets have followed suit, after a growth through the late 1990s, a decline started in the USA and Germany in the first decade of the new millennium, and prospects for journalist employment in OECD countries, also in the Nordic countries, is negative (Wunch-Vincent and Vickery, 2010: 17-21;Grönlund and Björkroth, 2011). At the 2009 WAN conference, newspaper publishers blamed the Internet and free media (particularly state owned Public Service providers), but also put blame on their own free content for cannibalizing the business 3 .…”