By linking the platform of the printed news with the digital one, both should preserve their particular upsides, developing a healthy competition as they feed each other back with their contents.
Each one operates in defined spaces, with their own rules that, moreover, have the same purpose: to broadcast news and reports, opinions and debates, with objectivity and reliability, as required by quality journalism.
In both of these platforms, concur audiences that have crystal clear preferences, and the challenge of both platforms is to conserve and increase the amount of readers, customers and users.
In the case of newspapers, the effort to modernize and reinvent itself has its direct reflexes in the digital platform, while we could say the same for the other way around.
As the advertising balances between the two, often favoring the digital one, media companies fine-tune their marketing strategies to get the most out of their monetization plans.
The newspapers have resorted to innovative ways of paid subscription programs as they offer options, such as private newsletters by email, in some cases, specifically with the topics that are of their preference, which could be detected through audience meters that are provided by digital counterpart or the “bots” that store this type of information.
A report of ‘Hora de Cierre’, the informative magazine of the Inter-American Press Association, indicates that the public in the United States and Europe is already paying for quality content about certain topics that are of particular interest, that they find in the newspapers. And that media like the ‘New York Magazine’ and ‘Bloombeeg Businesswek’ receive paid subscriptions that make up for about 60 percent of their total income.
Newspapers and magazines offer different models of paid subscription plans, with attractive incentives.
‘The New York Times’, for example, offers a special digital subscription program for the public to be able to listen to livestreamed music and this has attracted more than 100 million people to their podcast application: ‘The Daily’, which reveals the emphasis that these big brands apply on their business strategies to compensate for declines in their circulation rate or in their income.
Now people are thinking about custom newspaper editions. That is, to produce printed publications for specific audiences, such as those of the Millennial generation.
An example of success is that of the tabloid ‘Metro’, of the UK, which began to be published in 2003 with a daily circulation of almost 700 thousand copies and to this day it’s still going at a more than doubled pace with one and a half million copies on daily circulation because it offers content aimed at young people as they go to their workplace, which has triggered a decent profit level.
And the same goes for the ‘L’Observateur’, from France, which is promoted as the first personalized newspaper in the world, offering editions in certain cities with the topics that please both the advertisers and the readers. It’s also achieving unthinkable successes.
– Translated from spanish by Randy Rodriguez.
Director's Thoughts 