While 2008 and 2009 are the high-water marks in terms of anni horribli for the U.S. newspaper industry, the same ain't necessarily so across Europe, where some publishers have been more creative about business problem-solving. For example, the news is free, but people pay for related services.
In some European countries, newspapers are in worse shape than in the United States. In France, several papers are kept alive by public subsidies. In the ultracompetitive British market, national papers struggle to make money and local newspapers are disappearing at an accelerating rate.
But there are signs of journalistic life in Europe. Circulation is falling more slowly than in the United States. Most papers have been less affected by the recession than their American counterparts because they rely on readers more than on advertisers, who tend to be more fickle.
Though no one has found a magic bullet, some European publishers have found ways to meet the challenges. At Schibsted, an Oslo-based publisher, online activities — including newspapers, classified advertising sites and other pursuits — deliver about a quarter of the company’s revenue and the vast majority of its profit.
The star performer online is VG Nett, a Web site loosely affiliated with Verdens Gang, a tabloid newspaper. VG Nett has a profit margin of more than 30 percent and rivals Google as the most popular Web site in Norway.
VG Nett, like most newspaper Web sites, generates most of its revenue from advertising, but is starting to raise money from users. About 150,000 people pay up to 599 crowns, or nearly $90, a year for a weight-loss club. VG Nett recently started charging up to 780 crowns a year for live streams of soccer matches. And a social network connected with VG Nett charges users to upgrade their profiles. Access to news, however, remains free.
A business that has lost more than a quarter of its global sales over the last decade might not seem like the best example to follow. But alongside the wreckage left by digital piracy, new business models are emerging in the music industry — with Europe in the vanguard.
Few Europeans willing to pay for music directly, through services like iTunes, so the industry is instead bundling music costs into a broadband subscription, like basic cable channels do in the United States.
The Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, skeptical of applying micropayments to newspapers, has suggested providing access to newspaper Web sites for a fee paid at the Internet service provider level. For such models to succeed, newspapers would have to work together.
A group of newspapers in the French-speaking part of Belgium have shown the possibilities and the limitations of cooperating when faced with Google, which some see as a common enemy.