World Media Economics and Management Conference 2016

The fall in circulation and advertising revenues of print newspapers, originated by the popularization of the Internet as a news medium and the financial crisis of the last decade has forced most newspaper publishers to think about new revenue formulas, among which charging for digital news stands out.This work, based on a survey with 2,026 news consumers and Internet users in Spain, analyzes the state of paid print and digital news in Spain, looking into the socio-demographic variables, and those of media consumption, that affect the decision to pay for news.The results of this empirical research confirm that, even if most of the public is unwilling to pay for digital news, the design of revenue models based on users paying for news should consider the segmentation of readers according to socio-demographic variables – primarily age – and those variables related to interest in news and frequency of news consumption: survey respondents who were more interested in news and checked the news more often were more willing to pay for print and digital news. This significant relation was found among users who had already paid for digital news, and also among potential buyers who said that they were ready to buy digital news in the future.