Journalism and Revenues Shortfall
Published: 20 May 2013 By Abiodun Giwa
Internet’s disruption of journalism means uncertain future for journalists, unless they can adapt to the new multimedia. People talk about the flight of advertising revenues from the print-media to the internet as the cause of the print-media’s woes. Resultantly, many newspapers and magazines have seen their fortune nose-dived and operations closed. Some have chosen to remain online like the venerable Newsweek that has been renamed GlobalNewsweek. This has sparked a debate about the struggle between the internet and the print media over advertising revenues, and whether the print media will ever regain what it has lost to the internet or continue to decline.
“Whether the print media is declining is a matter of perspective. The newspapers still have an edge over the internet drawing the advert dollars from large display advertisements, something the tablets cannot do. The daily newspapers have been declining over the past 5 to10 years. However, the weekly newspapers have increased due to manageable cost of operation and publish daily online,” Scott Brinton, a journalist with the Long Island Herald, said.
However, before the Newsweek Magazine’s decision to stop its print edition, statistics show that newspapers in developed countries have been losing the battle to the internet in terms of sales from circulation and advertising revenues. A Pew Research Center Project, “The State of the Media-2013” said that the core of the newspapers’ problems have been rapidly declining advertising revenues, falling nearly 48 percent from 2006. The Pew report shows that the print advertisements fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2012. It says the digital advertisements has grown anemically and does not cover print advertisement losses.
To fulfill the objective of their operations, the print and the online publications (old and new start-ups) are scouring for new sources of revenues for survival. Meanwhile, they wish for restoration of the good old days, when advertisers did not have alternative medium like the internet to publish their classified and smaller display advertisements.
“Nothing is impossible,” Professor Kelly Fincham who teaches Advanced Digital Journalism at Hofstra University responds to a question on whether the advertising revenues the print media have lost to the internet will ever be restored. William Bourne, Village Voice editor-in-chief says it is not certain that the revenue will come back, but that it cannot be ruled out. Some are already coming back and some magazines are benefiting, but not as before. He says it is because of the uncertainty that publishers are all developing websites and adapting to new digital demands. Lyndsay Mcgregor, Associate editor at Foootwear Plus says emphatically she does not think the revenue will return again. Angela Velasquez, fashion editor at Earnshaw’s says the magazine has resorted to encouraging people who buy print edition through weekly e-plug that goes to the readers for readers to get in touch with
them. She says a lot of people get business from the e-plug and drives them back to the brands website.
Eranshaw’s practice is a reflection of the drive by online publishing startups to seek new sources of revenue as reported byNielsen Journalism Lab. Most of the companies interviewed by Nielsen writers in Europe, Asia and the U.S. have started looking outside journalism for revenue, realizing
that readers don’t click Google’s click-per-view-adverts, and that revenues from it do not match expectations. The writers were able to identify several areas like affiliate marketing, pay-for-content, selling data or services, organizing events, training and selling merchandise. In the meantime, investigative journalism has fallen victim, because publishers in the legacy media companies have reduced funding investigative reporters, an action said to have been necessitated by dwindled advertising revenues. The question here is who will pay for the investigations since advert revenues are no longer like it used to be when advertisers support was the principal subsidy for newspapers’operation.
“What we are seeing is a transformation. Right now, the biggest challenge for every newspaper (print and online) is how to make the advertising dollar on the web. We know newspapers will eventually be online, but the tablet is not able to carry the large display advertisements. The legacy media is still making money and that will help them eventually migrate to online edition. The advertisement agencies have developed large pop-ups online, but it is still in development. The moment the agencies achieve desirable breakthrough and the tablets can carry large display
advertisements, it will mean a time for all to migrate online,” Brinton said.
Newsweek’s associate editor, Robert Vergers reveals during a conference visit by Hofstra University’s journalism graduate students that the magazine still publishes its paper edition in Pakistan and in Latin American countries through a handful of overseas licenses. He highlights how the
transformation by the internet has affected operations of the print media in the U.S. This in turn has given birth to the expenses problem due to the flight of largely classified adverts to the internet, causing the print-media’s difficulty to finance the huge cost of producing and distributing the paper edition.
The New York Times is not left out of the struggle for survival. Its revenue decreased by 2 percent in the last quarter of 6 months ending March 31, 2013. Its current weakness in advertising revenues was largely, but not entirely offset by continued growth in circulation revenues, Mark Thompson, president and chief executive of the company explained in a report released last month. He said the Times will launch new products and new services; invest in expansion of existing operations of video and live events, while searching for the right advertisement’s executive from internal and external talents.
There is no context strong enough to prove that advertising revenue is the live-wire of the print media than the response from a telephone interview with an anonymous editorial staff of amNEWYORKwho asked the reporter if he wanted to place an advertisement. And when the reporter retorted he wanted him to talk about dwindled advertising revenues as a result of the competition from the internet, he said they were not allowed to talk on such an issue. The first question a visitor is subjected in any newspaper house is whether he or has come to place an advertisement, showing the search for advertising revenues like a pin in haystack.
The disruption to the print media by the internet is continuing and no one knows where it will lead, the TOW Center for Digital Journalism said in a report about collaborations among journalism practitioners at all level and the teaching of journalism students about their need to embrace the multimedia as a solution for the moment. The uncertainty pervading journalism’s ecosystem the center says, is like a web that is difficult to say, for certain, what will happen in the future.
“Whether the print media is declining is a matter of perspective. The newspapers still have an edge over the internet drawing the advert dollars from large display advertisements, something the tablets cannot do. The daily newspapers have been declining over the past 5 to10 years. However, the weekly newspapers have increased due to manageable cost of operation and publish daily online,” Scott Brinton, a journalist with the Long Island Herald, said.
However, before the Newsweek Magazine’s decision to stop its print edition, statistics show that newspapers in developed countries have been losing the battle to the internet in terms of sales from circulation and advertising revenues. A Pew Research Center Project, “The State of the Media-2013” said that the core of the newspapers’ problems have been rapidly declining advertising revenues, falling nearly 48 percent from 2006. The Pew report shows that the print advertisements fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2012. It says the digital advertisements has grown anemically and does not cover print advertisement losses.
To fulfill the objective of their operations, the print and the online publications (old and new start-ups) are scouring for new sources of revenues for survival. Meanwhile, they wish for restoration of the good old days, when advertisers did not have alternative medium like the internet to publish their classified and smaller display advertisements.
“Nothing is impossible,” Professor Kelly Fincham who teaches Advanced Digital Journalism at Hofstra University responds to a question on whether the advertising revenues the print media have lost to the internet will ever be restored. William Bourne, Village Voice editor-in-chief says it is not certain that the revenue will come back, but that it cannot be ruled out. Some are already coming back and some magazines are benefiting, but not as before. He says it is because of the uncertainty that publishers are all developing websites and adapting to new digital demands. Lyndsay Mcgregor, Associate editor at Foootwear Plus says emphatically she does not think the revenue will return again. Angela Velasquez, fashion editor at Earnshaw’s says the magazine has resorted to encouraging people who buy print edition through weekly e-plug that goes to the readers for readers to get in touch with
them. She says a lot of people get business from the e-plug and drives them back to the brands website.
Eranshaw’s practice is a reflection of the drive by online publishing startups to seek new sources of revenue as reported byNielsen Journalism Lab. Most of the companies interviewed by Nielsen writers in Europe, Asia and the U.S. have started looking outside journalism for revenue, realizing
that readers don’t click Google’s click-per-view-adverts, and that revenues from it do not match expectations. The writers were able to identify several areas like affiliate marketing, pay-for-content, selling data or services, organizing events, training and selling merchandise. In the meantime, investigative journalism has fallen victim, because publishers in the legacy media companies have reduced funding investigative reporters, an action said to have been necessitated by dwindled advertising revenues. The question here is who will pay for the investigations since advert revenues are no longer like it used to be when advertisers support was the principal subsidy for newspapers’operation.
“What we are seeing is a transformation. Right now, the biggest challenge for every newspaper (print and online) is how to make the advertising dollar on the web. We know newspapers will eventually be online, but the tablet is not able to carry the large display advertisements. The legacy media is still making money and that will help them eventually migrate to online edition. The advertisement agencies have developed large pop-ups online, but it is still in development. The moment the agencies achieve desirable breakthrough and the tablets can carry large display
advertisements, it will mean a time for all to migrate online,” Brinton said.
Newsweek’s associate editor, Robert Vergers reveals during a conference visit by Hofstra University’s journalism graduate students that the magazine still publishes its paper edition in Pakistan and in Latin American countries through a handful of overseas licenses. He highlights how the
transformation by the internet has affected operations of the print media in the U.S. This in turn has given birth to the expenses problem due to the flight of largely classified adverts to the internet, causing the print-media’s difficulty to finance the huge cost of producing and distributing the paper edition.
The New York Times is not left out of the struggle for survival. Its revenue decreased by 2 percent in the last quarter of 6 months ending March 31, 2013. Its current weakness in advertising revenues was largely, but not entirely offset by continued growth in circulation revenues, Mark Thompson, president and chief executive of the company explained in a report released last month. He said the Times will launch new products and new services; invest in expansion of existing operations of video and live events, while searching for the right advertisement’s executive from internal and external talents.
There is no context strong enough to prove that advertising revenue is the live-wire of the print media than the response from a telephone interview with an anonymous editorial staff of amNEWYORKwho asked the reporter if he wanted to place an advertisement. And when the reporter retorted he wanted him to talk about dwindled advertising revenues as a result of the competition from the internet, he said they were not allowed to talk on such an issue. The first question a visitor is subjected in any newspaper house is whether he or has come to place an advertisement, showing the search for advertising revenues like a pin in haystack.
The disruption to the print media by the internet is continuing and no one knows where it will lead, the TOW Center for Digital Journalism said in a report about collaborations among journalism practitioners at all level and the teaching of journalism students about their need to embrace the multimedia as a solution for the moment. The uncertainty pervading journalism’s ecosystem the center says, is like a web that is difficult to say, for certain, what will happen in the future.
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