Reshaping the Business Model

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

By Ryan Franker

The San Fransisco Chronicle has figured out a way in making a profit with the newspaper. The Chronicle believes that changing their business model is what helped their change. They had such a horrible decline in daily subscription last year, but with the changes that were made they were able to make up for it.

The changes the Chronicle did, were offering fewer discounts on subscriptions, and stopped delivering the newspapers to homes that made no economic sense in delivering it to that house. Their subscription rate jumped from $4.75 to $7.75 within 18 months. The Chronicle has the largest circulation in the Bay Area.

With the Chronicle's subscription rate up, the newspaper was able to make changes that would benefit them in the long run. The Chronicle is planning on switching the normal newspaper paper to the glossy magazine type paper, it will be the first newspaper to switch to that kind of paper in the country. The paper is also making a new section in the paper called Ovations, it will be for arts and culture.

It is hard to tell which path to take, because each city is different and will take a different approach to it. The Chronicle was lucky that the approach they took, the people liked and were able to give them money back to enhance the readers papers.

(Photo Credited: flickr)

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Free News for Younger Readers

By Taylor Finch


Newspapers today have been on the decline for a while, and are desperate to find an answer to put them back on the map as soon as possible.

France is trying out a new plan by giving away free papers to young readers in attempts to turn them into customers. The government named the project "My Free Newspaper," in which 18-to-24-year-olds would be given a free year's subscription to a newspaper of their choice.

This project is just one of many other projects that the government is doing, including financial subsidies to newspapers, to help cure the problems of the newspaper industry.

These problems, such as advertising slumps and the Internet being the primary hub for news today, are especially bad in France. According to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers in Paris, only half as many papers are sold in comparison to Britain or Germany.

France is particularly lacking young readers, so this project is offering about 60 publications that they can choose from, including the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, the global edition of The New York Times.

Costs of the project are being split by the participating newspapers and the state, with the government giving $22.5 million over the course of three years.

Some believe that this is a bad time for newspapers to not be receiving revenue from readers, but maybe this could influence the younger readers who already read and buy newspapers to influence others to do the same.
(Picture by: metajungle.net)

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