Australia - Digital Media - Newspaper Publishing

Synopsis

The newspaper publishers are among those hardest hit by the massive changes that are taking place as a consequence of rapidly changing digital technologies.

As BuddeComm has discussed in various analyses over the past few years, the publishers were slow to come to an understanding of the impact of the internet, and for a long time they have taken the wrong approach.

Many of the printed media have resorted to ‘dumbing down’ their newspapers in order to survive. This has led to excesses – illegal practices in order to obtain news, and politicisation of the media to create a platform of fear, uncertainty and doubt in relation to some of the critical issues that are now being faced around the world.

This led to a major conflict around News Corp and as a result many countries are reviewing their media policies. It also brought many of these issues into the public arena and a broader participation in the debate surrounding the future of the media is now taking place.

New e-business models will need to be developed whereby the printed media could use their broad appeal to attract customers and then, once these customers are inside their applications and services, they could explore new business models that would enable them to monetise these visits.

In this report we cover some of the companies that are involved with printed media. We also provide an overview with analysis on the company operations towards their digital developments that the companies are using in their strategies to remain dominating in the digital connected world. We provide some financial information and some statistics throughout the text and in tabular and easy-to-read chart formats.

Key developments:

Paywalls, digital news, printed media, hardcopy, media readership, apps, e-news

Companied mentioned in this report include:

APN, News Corp, News Limited, Fairfax Media, Fairfax Digital, Journalism Online.