Crisis Management in Media Companies

The crisis in the newspaper industry is above all a financing crisis: the business model practiced for almost 200 years of selling newspapers to the readership at low prices and instead making profits by financing advertising is working less and less well. The reason for this is the disruptive change in media production and distribution due to digital transformation and, in connection with this, the appearance of new information providers on the Internet. These lead to an intensification of the competitive situation for classic publishing products, both in terms of audience reach and even more so in terms of the acquisition of advertising money. The following article is essentially based on a research project at the University of Salzburg and a subsequent literature analysis up to the end of 2021, which showed that no uniform paradigm of solution models has yet emerged internationally. The phase of trial and error and short-term reactions on the part of the publishing houses has now lasted for around 20 years. It is also unclear what impact the newspaper crisis has had on publishers’ and audiences’ understanding of quality. The ongoing digital transformation obviously does not allow for standard models.