Print will still be relevant, says Mediahuis

While printed newspapers remain an important source of revenue for many news publishers, there’s no denying that the print product has seen massive declines during the past 15 years as news consumers increasingly turn to news websites and other digital products such as newsletters, audio and video.

With the print medium becoming less relevant, “the important thing is that we reach the maximum number of people in the right way at the right time,” Paul Verwilt, COO, Mediahuis, Belgium, told the participants at WAN-IFRA’s World Printers Summit.

Today, Mediahuis has more than 30 news brands, and has been active on social media for several years to reach more people, especially youngsters.

Mediahuis has around 1.7 million subscribers across six countries, of which 57 percent are print and the rest are digital. In 2022, 70 percent of its gross margin was attributed to print publications (in terms of B2C revenues).

The publisher’s internal analysis shows that print will still be relevant in 2030, but the share would likely go down to 30 percent from the existing 70 percent.

Keeping printing and distribution costs under control

Scaling and cross-company consolidation is likely to keep printing costs under control, Verwilt said.

These costs can be further reduced by:

• Automation of print processes: Digital-first workflows in the newsroom, automated print layout, and automation in printing facilities.
• Widening the print window: This means tweaking the closing times for newspapers and finding ways to increase the printing window to improve the productivity of the printing facility.
• Reduce stops: This includes pagination uniformity, cutting editions and reducing newspaper size/volume
• Consolidation and cross-publisher cooperation: This means working with publishers that were, or are, considered rivals in the marketplace. For example, in Ireland, Mediahuis works together with The Irish Times, one of their biggest competitors, to have their newspapers printed.

Distribution, on the other hand, is complicated, Verwilt said.

“The cost of distribution per copy would likely double. If at some point we stop distributing newspapers in some areas, the reason would most likely be the cost and not demand,” he said.

Germany’s FAZ finds ‘life insurance’ with F+ 

Despite being one of Germany’s most prominent news publishers, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), has seen its print circulation decline drastically in recent years.

“Ninety percent of our subscribers are digital, which is stabilising our operations in print as well,” said Carsten Knop, Publisher of FAZ Digital Products.

FAZ’s print circulation is almost half of what it used to be 10 years ago, and the downturn is accelerating.

“There’s nothing you can do to stop that,” Knop said.

On the upside, the publisher’s entry level digital subscription app, F+, acts as a growth driver. As of October 2022, it has crossed 120,000 subscriptions and is still growing.

“F+ is our life insurance and the product that keeps us up and running with a compounded annual growth rate of about 30 percent,” he added.

However, despite this digital uptick, the brand must maintain the growth rate to counter the print decline. “Digital is profiting from print in a way that is unexpected because of those distribution problems Paul was talking about,” Knop said.

In July 2023, FAZ moved its closing time to 4 pm (moving it up by two hours from the previous time of 6 pm). This deadline made it possible to provide its customers e-papers starting at 6 pm, “which is a really early and has the entire metro section of Frankfurt inside,” he said.

New platforms help broaden appeal to younger audiences

FAZ has also joined the leagues of media companies investing in TikTok.

“I’m absolutely sure that our brand wouldn’t resonate with a 20-year-old in Germany if we weren’t present on those channels. This helps develop brand recall. If we want them to buy our digital subscription or the printed paper, they need to know about us,” Knop said.

On average, if a video does well, it tends to have more than a million plays on the platform.

A few years ago, to promote its brand, FAZ tried its hand at podcasts, which now garner a total of 770,000 plays a month.

Additionally, FAZ has introduced news quizzes on its website as a means of attracting more readers and getting them to spend more time on the platform.

The publisher has also been collaborating with two large public broadcast stations in Germany – ARD and ZDF – to further expand the brand’s reach. These stations also have YouTube channels for younger audiences called Funk, and FAZ produces videos for them.

Furthermore, the company is also planning to launch a multimedia edition of its subscription tier, different from the tiers it currently has, and investments are being made in that direction. It is also planning to relaunch its website in Spring 2024 to make it more attractive and responsive.

“As long as we are successful in this [digital] side of our operation, we will be able to print newspapers for the next 5-10 years,” Knop said.

WAN-IFRA’s Neha Gupta and Brian Veseling contributed to this report.