When ad revenue shifted away from traditional media, online media was the main beneficiary of much of the diverted revenue stream. But with insufficient returns from digital display ads, online media had to look elsewhere.
A Shift In News Consumption
Online news media now targets subscriptions, memberships, donations or per-article payments for revenue. These monetization efforts have been more successful in some countries than others, according to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018.
Proportion That Have Paid For Online News
Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018
Nordic countries rank first in adapting to paid news services. Norway's share of paid news consumers is 30 percent, closely followed by Sweden at 26 percent, according to Reuters.
"They have the added benefit of coming from wealthy societies that value news, have a strong subscription tradition and where language and the small size of their market protects them from foreign competition," the report said.
U.S. Flat Year-Over-Year
For the U.S., the number is 16 percent, although the share has remained flat with 2017, when it benefited from the "Trump bump," according to the report.
Source: Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2018
Going by political leanings, more Democrats seem to favor paid news than Republicans.
"This is a clear statement from those groups about the continuing need for high-quality journalism that can hold the Trump administration to account," the report said.
The main beneficiaries of the subscription trend in the U.S. are newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, with the NYT having increased its subscription revenue by about 50 percent in 2018.
What's Next
The continuing success of paid online news depends on the extent to which the importance of high-quality journalism can be impressed upon readers. Educating consumers about the problems faced by news organizations and making them cognizant that most digital sites are operating at a loss could help, the Reuters report said.
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