Local News’ Transition to Paid Content In the Context of Layoffs, Mergers and Bankruptcies I

At the end of September, Oxford University’s Reuters Institute published a research report titled: “Publish less, but publish better: pivoting to paid in local news”. The research is based on 20 interviews conducted between December 2019 and March 2020 with managers and editors at eight local and regional newspapers in four countries (Finland, France, Germany, and the UK). The report examines how local and regional newspapers around Europe have adapted their editorial and business strategies to remain sustainable in the digital media environment.

Most of the legacy publishers have complete their digitalization, while the local news’ transition to paid contents is still under the way. This article is excerpted from Reuters’s research, and we are going to analyze how local news complete their transition to paid contents under the impacts of digitalization and epidemic.

Summery

In the last two years, all of the case newspapers have shifted from digital strategies emphasizing the pursuit of audience reach, monetized through advertising or a blend of paid-content models and auxiliary sources, to a focus on building lasting relationships with readers who will pay for online content in the form of subscriptions, memberships, access to premium articles, donations, or micropayments.

The news organizations prioritize loyal readers over ‘fly-by’ visitors driven by platforms such as Google and Facebook. They aim to attract these audiences through producing distinctive, ‘value-added’ content that reflects both the classic functions of local journalism – coverage of crime, courts, and traffic – and also allows for continued experimentation in long-form, data-driven, and solutions-oriented reporting.