The ongoing digitisation of media channels will lead to an even wider range of consumer and advertiser choice. Because their budgets for time and money are finite, one can expect tough competition between the different media channels as well as within individual media.
Newspaper publishers have started to react to these changes. The Internet has already become nearly standard publishing channel, despite the fact that no large-scale commercial breakthrough has yet happened. Many new product launches, product makeovers, and provisions of value-added services for readers have been instituted and predictions indicate that the changes have just begun. The developments provide reasons to examine how newspaper publishers foresee their revenue streams changing in the future, how they want to develop their business models, and how this will be reflected in their organisation structures and activities.
In order to introduce the reader to the subject of investigation, this report first explores in depth the nature of business models, the meaning and the importance of innovation, and the characteristics of newspaper and electronic businesses. Then, the results of a study of Ifra member publishers and top newspaper company executives from the most important newspapers in countries around the world are presented.