1) What are the changes that the newspaper industry is going through? Where do you think the “technology” of news on paper is in its lifecycle? Where is it likely headed?
The newspaper industry is experiencing the declining stage of the product life-cycle, careening toward extinction.
The case describes the fundamental changes as follows. Print advertising revenues are falling fast while digital revenue is growing, but not enough to cover print ad losses. Total newspaper advertising revenue in 2013 was down 49 percent from 2003, according to the Pew Research Center. Meanwhile, digital advertising is not picking up the load. This 2011 New York Times story by Nate Silver illustrates the problem:
"How much are those page views worth? The Huffington Post had revenues of about $30 million last year, they’ve reported, almost all of which was from display advertising. This revenue was generated on roughly 4.8 billion page views over the course of 2010, according to Quantcast data. That means the average page view was worth a little more than six-tenths of a cent, or that 1,000 page views were worth about $6.25."
What the case does not do, however, is explain the structural changes driving these trends. What we’re witnessing is the break-up of a monopoly. Thanks to the Internet, newspapers have lost both their monopoly on the news -- from infotainment sources, such as TMZ, and “serious” ones, such as the nonprofit ProPublica – and their monopoly on services, such as classified advertising. Emerging in its place is a nascent digital duopoly: Facebook and Google.
2) Is the paywall working? Lay out some factors that suggest that it does and some that suggest that it is not and then make your recommendation. Where do you think the digital edition is in its lifecycle?
Yes. It’s working. To update the case study’s figures, the paper has gone from zero to 910,000 paid