Ironically, those same advocates provided one of the strongest arguments for staying in, and developing, the print business, saying newspapers generate much more revenue per reader than online media, and will continue to do so for some time to come.
At the conference, which boasted a record 480 participants from 75 countries, Vin Crosbie of Borrell Associates reported that online advertising revenues are rising dramatically at more than $17bn in the US last year, with $4bn going to newspapers.
But online media produces 20 to 100 times less revenue per reader than newspapers do, he said. To put it another way, for every print reader lost, newspapers have to replace them with between 20 and 100 website readers to gain the same revenue.
“We need to make the revenues we earn from online readers equal or more than what we earned from the people who no longer read us in print,” said Crosbie.
Other speakers echoed Crosbie, particularly when it comes to classified advertising. Jim Chisholm, Strategy Advisor to the World Association of Newspapers, said the movement of classified advertising from print to online was accelerating rapidly worldwide.
“We are seeing fantastic growth in online classifieds, but it is not enough to make up for the money lost from print classifieds,” said Chisholm.
Much of the conference was devoted to strategies for developing newspapers’ online operations, but WAN president Gavin O’Reilly, also warned that newspaper executives must guard against overreacting to anecdotal information that tends to exaggerate the impact of the internet on newspaper operations.
O’Reilly urged participants to check the facts and reject the myths that are fuelling belief that the internet is threatening newspapers.
“There is not a shred of empirical evidence, here or in the USA, or in Scandinavia, or the Far East, to confirm that the internet per se is damaging newspaper circulations,” he said. “Indeed, a recent study by WAN demonstrated that those newspapers with strong web activities were actually the ones that were showing circulation growth.”
Comment below to have your say on this story.
If you have a news story or tip-off, get in touch at editorial@sprinter.com.au.
Sign up to the Sprinter newsletter
