Survival is SuccessJournalistic Online Start-Ups in Western Europe

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen and Nicola Bruno

International Symposium on Online Journalism, April 2012

Overview over the performance of the nine case start-ups

Different media systems/context

Germany: Strong and slowly declining legacy news media

France: Weaker and rapidly declining legacy news media

Italy: Weak and rapidly declining legacy news media

Challenge No. 1 - competition from legacy media

“As long as Netzeitung was one of the few websites providing a constant flow of updated news, our visitor traffic increased exponentially. When around 2003 mainstream news media landed on the Web, however, we could not hold our position and could not attract new readers, given our lack of a definite brand, easy to recognize and understand by the general public.”

Dominika Ahlrichs, former managing editor of Netzeitung

Challenge No. 2 – the economics of online ads

In 2008, “[One million unique visitors per month] brings in revenues of one million euro; with two million visitors, we could gain three million euro in advertising alone.”

Pierre Haski, co-founder of Rue89

In 2011, Rue89 regularly drew around 2 million unique monthly visitors, but generated less than a million euro in advertising revenue.

Survival is (a precondition for) success

Thank youEmail: rasmuskleisnielsen@gmail.com

More at: http://rasmuskleisnielsen.net/