On Digital Distribution’s Failure to Solve Newspapers’ Existential Crisis

Abstract

This chapter examines some of the symptoms and causes of the crisis facing newspapers via analyses of their finances and audience measures. It considers crisis facing newspapers in some highly developed economies, describing the decades of dwindling circulations and the post-millennial retreat in revenues, trend that accelerated following the Great Recession. The chapter analyzes the New York Times Co.'s and Fairfax Media's print and digital revenues from 2011 to 2016 in order to gauge the extent of their digital transformations in financial terms. It also analysis of the financial performance of multiplatform news publishers in Australia, Europe, and the US, which leads us to conclude that digital distribution is not reversing newspapers' decline, and raises questions about the support for journalism in the long term. The consequences of the crisis, and whether there are any realistic remedies, are also considered, both in relations to journalism as a product and to the institutions, such as newspapers, that have traditionally produced it.

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