The impact of new media on newspaper circulation in selected countries
Reinventing the newspaper
The impact of new media on newspaper circulation in selected countries
TESSE AGUILAR
Dec. 21, 2018
In nine countries covered by a study, print media show how to beat the crisis
HIGH internet penetration, which makes it easy for the public to get their news from the web, won’t necessarily cause newspaper circulation to decline.
A common strategy: redesign story-telling based on preferences of readers
This is at least true in nine countries — Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa — which became the focus of a data-mining and cluster analysis study by a group of college students.
Newspapers here may need to “redesign story telling style based on the preference of the readers” though, said Tessa Frances Aguilar, Christine Dianne, Balansag, Marichu Canencia and Milva Villocero in their paper.
That and continue to raise its online advertising revenues.
Revenue generated from the improved circulation-based sales can then be combined with online advertising income, leading the media house concerned into a more robust position operationally.
In coming up with their study, the group mined the Internet for 2011 to 2016 data on newspaper circulation, per-capita gross domestic product, internet usage, internet peak, internet penetration and unemployment rate in the nine previously mentioned countries.
They then clustered the countries into three and found Cluster 1, which had Finland, Ireland, Singapore, Canada and Australia together, showing the best information on battling the decline of newspaper circulation.
According to the group, these five countries had the biggest newspaper circulation among the countries in the study despite having the highest internet peak, penetration and usage.
And the combined online and on print revenue in Ireland’s the Irish Times, for example, led to a combined growth of one percent year on year, though still buoyed by a 103 percent increase in sales by their digital edition for the first half of 2016. 