Can Publishers Make Money From The Internet?

No conference is complete without reference to this thorny topic and the Dow Jones’ Fourth Annual European Media and Entertainment Summit was no exception. Thomas Knipp, editor of Handelsblatt and associate publisher at the Wall Street Journal, painted an exciting picture of the “E-Paper”, a newspaper you can download (a plastic computer screen you can roll up and fold). This would remove a huge barrier to entry – distribution costs, but I still see a market “dominated by the traditional publishers, where print, digital and online merge into one platform”.

Emily Bell, former editor-in-chief of Guardian Unlimited, observed that newspaper readership was already moving online, but online costs were also relatively high and there will “never be an opportunity to charge online for breaking news”. Niche material such as financial content would make money as the WSJ was proving with over 600,000 paying online subscribers. Bell also believed that the cover price of newspapers could rise hugely over coming years – £1.50-£2 is the “real price”.

The European Media and Entertainment Summit is a Dow Jones conference in association with PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

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