"Mexico’s booming media industry is controlled by some of the richest businessmen on earth. While the sector grows at a rate three times that of the overall economy, an alarming concentration of media ownership goes hand in hand with the well-known lack of safety for Mexico’s journalists, many o
...
f whom cannot even make a living from their precarious salaries, increasing their vulnerability to pressures of all kinds. The almost traditional concentration of a lot of power in the hands of very few media magnates and politicians also comes as a result of blatant regulatory flaws." (http://www.mom-rsf.org/en/countries/Mexico)
more
"[The authors] introduce a conceptual model for organizations and other stakeholders wishing to monitor and evaluate sustainable journalism. Their chapter provides a theoretical foundation for the argument that journalistic media competes for a wide range of resources that determine their success an
...
d sustainability. By carefully identifying and monitoring the distribution of these resources, which include, for instance, advertising revenue, audience attention, government resources, investor capital and skilled labor, we will better understand the nuances and dynamics of media ecologies, and possibly respond to the processes by which some organizations evolve while others fade away." (Page xxxi)
more
"Over the past years, a range of different databases have been constructed, and research efforts have been made to find the key to making digital news ventures successful. Many of them have searched for best practices, or a secret recipe for a business model that would make the news business economi
...
cally sustainable in a digital era. James Breiner has taken on the tedious task of analyzing 20 media startup databases in search of patterns and major lessons learned." (Page xxxii)
more
"This study critically examines how the private press in Zimbabwe survived during periods of economic and political crises. In year 2010, the Zimbabwe media fraternity saw the re-opening of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe (ANZ) after closure in 2003 and the emergence of the NewsDay, published by t
...
he Alpha Media Holdings (AMH). The study examines how these publishers survive the economic challenges in Zimbabwe, especially during the prolonged period of the Zimbabwe Crisis from 2010 to 2018. It critically investigates how these two publications have remained operational despite the limited advertising revenue – owing to company closures – and the adversarial relations with the government – a critical source of huge advertising revenue. Given that copy sales of newspapers hardly sustain business entities, this article explores the alternative sources of income and the impact of vested interests on alternative revenue for privately owned newspapers. It is a qualitative research based on findings from thirteen semi-structured in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of ANZ and AMH officials and journalists. Publishers have relied on two main survival strategies, namely, internal cost-cutting strategies and building good business relations with the ruling political elites. Internal cost-cutting strategies have included newsroom convergences, retrenchments, salary reductions and freezes, reduction of newspaper pages and shutting down national newspaper bureaus. External survival methods, on the other hand, have been seeking donor funding, attracting political investments and embracing the new political order for government protection in the event of failure to pay statutory obligations such as taxes and pensions." (Abstract)
more
"Until the state and its aligned media operate in a fair and competitive media market, there will be little space for independent news media to survive, much less make the investments needed to innovate and survive in this raucous, frontier environment. Myanmar has a much smaller overall advertising
...
sector than neighboring countries, and audiences are rapidly shifting to digital/mobile platforms. Outside Yangon, ethnic and regional news media, often operating in rural and conflict-filled environments, have little possibility of generating sufficient amounts of market-derived revenue to support their operations. To lose their voices would be to lose the plural, local and diverse voices of an inclusive society. To create a vibrant overall media sector, the government must have the political will to create a vibrant public service media sector. To repeat: at the very least, it should stop competing for revenue against the news media it licenses, regulates, can sue, prosecute and imprison. The Broadcasting Law has provisions for this; the government should embrace them. It must also further develop the legal infrastructure supporting media, including copyright, intellectual property, and online privacy laws. For all the laws governing journalists and journalism, there are few that protect their work product or that support the news media industry and its role in the broader economy." (Conclusion)
more
"Only a few media companies have a predominant market position and thus a potentially high influence on public opinion in Tanzania. Whereas the regulatory framework should in theory safeguard media pluralism and prevent media concentration, it shows considerable gaps in practice. Moreover, the legal
...
environment restricts data collection and research." (http://www.mom-rsf.org/en/countries/tanzania)
more
"Viewership, listenership and readership in the Sri Lankan media market is highly concentrated among a few media owners, many of whom have political affiliations. Limited access to ownership information and a number of regulatory shortcomings pose a further threat to media pluralism in the country."
...
(http://www.mom-rsf.org/en/countries/sri-lanka)
more
"The seemingly buzzing Lebanese media market is, in fact, controlled by only a few highly politicized owners that are either directly affiliated with political parties or belong to Lebanese dynasties. Additional threats to media pluralism arise from clear editorial lines defined by politics, close t
...
ies among the dynasties, and a number of regulatory shortcomings." (http://www.mom-rsf.org/en/countries/Lebanon)
more
"El movimiento podcaster está formado por una amplia variedad de participantes: pequeños, medianos, independientes, corporativos, fugaces, históricos. Este artículo propone la descripción de cuatro casos caracterizados como “redes de podcast”. Estos proyectos fueron diseñados para y subsis
...
ten con la producción de varios programas y aparecen así como emprendimientos pensados por y para la producción de podcast. La pregunta que se hace aquí es puramente descriptiva y exploratoria: ¿cómo producen, distribuyen y comercializan sus contenidos las redes de podcast en Argentina? Para responderla se realizan un trabajo cualitativo de entrevistas y análisis de contenidos y otro cuantitativo para los niveles de comparación entre los volúmenes y formatos de cada una de las redes." (Resumen)
more
"To study the effects of consolidation and ownership on news diversity, we model the diversity of Chilean coverage on the basis of ownership records and social media data. We create similarity networks of news outlets on the basis of their ownership and the topics they cover. We then examine the rel
...
ationships between the topology of ownership networks and content similarity to characterize how ownership affects news coverage. A network analysis reveals that Chilean media is highly concentrated both in terms of ownership as well as in terms of topics covered. Our method can be used to determine which groups of outlets and ownership exert the greatest influence on news coverage." (Abstract)
more
"This document reports on the construction and operationalisation of a proposed annual Media Sustainability Barometer (MSB). The MSB is a quantitative index offered as a tool to both measure and monitor the media ecosystem, in terms of its sustainability across key contributing forces - and much mor
...
e. This tool has the power to model how changes in the ecosystem impact on media sustainability in specific countries or blocs, and also to estimate how the media environment impacts on other spheres of society, including those identified in the UN Sustainable Development Goals. As such, it addresses the gap in existing initiatives, by bringing together mixed-source media viability indices proposed by UNESCO, Deutsche Welle Akademie and others, into one objectively derived quantitative index. In doing so, it offers the opportunity to analyse and understand the complex dynamics amongst spheres of society that shape, and are shaped by, a sustainable, pluralistic and diverse media sector." (Executive summary)
more
"This report explores the recent trajectory of South African news with a specific focus on the economic sustainability of news media. Digital news consumption on mobile phone, and especially via Social Media on Smart Phones (SMSP) is fracturing audiences and reducing traditional sources of revenue.
...
Printed newspapers in particular are starting to close and will be closing, this report suggests, at an accelerated rate, and while the past two or three years have seen a revival in important national-level political reporting, local and community media is increasingly losing the struggle to survive. Dozens of community papers have closed in 2015-2017, some after many decades of publishing. The Times in Johannesburg closed in January 2018. Many others will follow. In addition, as this report explores, much of the best current journalism produced in South Africa is currently financed by grants and donations from international foundations. The disruption of the news industry by digital technology has, in South Africa, been exacerbated by political manipulation of news media, including, as this report explores, a multi-pronged attack on media coordinated by what the report describes as the Zuma-centred power elite (after the 2017 PARI report “How South Africa is being Stolen”)." (Executive summary)
more
"Winner of the 2019 Robert Picard Book Award, the Handbook of Media Management and Economics has become a required reference for students, professors, policy makers and industry practitioners. The volume was developed around two primary objectives: assessing the state of knowledge for the key topics
...
in the media management and economics fields; and establishing the research agenda in these areas, ultimately pushing the field in new directions. The Handbook's chapters are organized into parts addressing the theoretical components, key issues, analytical tools, and future directions for research. With its unparalleled breadth of content from expert authors, the Handbook provides background knowledge of the various theoretical dimensions and historical paradigms, and establishes the direction for the next phases of research in this evolving arena of study. Updates include the rise of mobile and social media, globalization, audience fragmentation and big data." (Publisher description)
more
"Entrepreneurship and innovation are currently high on the media industry agenda, but focus has so far been mostly on the economic sustainability of new ventures. Considering the repressive political climate in Egypt, Naomi Sakr explores the tension between economic growth and the ethical, democrati
...
c practices of Egyptian startups. The study highlights, among other things, the temporal dimensions of sustainability, where focus on social sustainability can be seen as investment in stakeholder relationships that create long term economic returns." (Page xxxii)
more
"This edited collection focuses on successful small and medium-sized film and television companies in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Using original interviews with company founders and other employees, contributors explore case studies of businesses that have made successfu
...
l productions, both in terms of popularity and critical acclaim, for at least five years. The book gives an overview of the film and television sector in each of the four featured countries, followed by chapters that investigate particular companies and their relationship to a wider industrial context. The Introduction provides a theoretical and methodological discussion and the Conclusion draws together the common elements that may explain how these companies have been able to survive and thrive." (Publisher description)
more
"This report looks at ten factors that have altered the media marketplace and that pose challenges to national and local news producers and their sources of revenue. They include ways in which governments interfere in media markets; changes in the structure of news distribution and audience behavior
...
; and the way these changes have transformed how advertising media is bought, sold, and distributed. It then examines the key engagement metrics taken from a sampling of media development partner organizations to offer thoughts on how well these news producers are prepared to compete for audiences and revenue. Finally, it offers thoughts about the implications of these issues for media development organizations." (Introduction, page 2)
more
"The state has been for year the biggest advertiser in the country. Public money has been spent through its Ministries, institutions, republic agencies, bodies, local self-governments etc on different advertising and sponsorship contracts. The total value of state advertising still remains unknown d
...
ue to the poor regulation of this sector. Most commercial advertising is placed with national media outlets. Outside the main cities, local economies are underdeveloped and advertising markets are very poor or nearly nonexistent. Under every government so far, owners of media buying agencies had close ties with the ruling party and politics. These connections have helped acentuate growing economic and editorial pressure on Serbian media. According to the latest available data which relate to 2016, the total value of the advertising market in Serbia was 174 million Euros. This amount of money is insufficient to sustain the survival of the curently active media in Serbia. There are more than 1600 active registred media outlets which are competing for their share of the advertising market." (http://www.mom-rsf.org)
more
"The idea of rules limiting concentration of media ownership is often cast by media owners as a restriction on their right to freedom of expression. Unfortunately, the behaviour of States in Latin America has often lent support to this perspective, especially when States abuse for political ends the
...
ir power to provide for regulation of the media. International law has a clear answer to both of these problems. By protecting the rights of both the speaker and the listener, international law provides an alternative view of the claim that limits on media ownership are simply restrictions on freedom of expression. Instead, by promoting a plurality of voices in the public sphere, such limits enhance the right of listeners to receive a diversity of information and ideas, which is essential to the exercise of full citizenship, political participation, robust cultural expression and many other important values in society. Thus what at first blush may appear as a restriction on the expressive rights of speakers is also a form of protection for the freedom of expression rights of listeners." (Conclusion)
more
"The main finding of this study is that digital media entrepreneurs are deeply transforming the way that journalism is conducted and consumed in Latin America. They are not just producing news — they are generators of change, promoting better laws, defending human rights, exposing corruption, and
...
fighting abuses of power. They are driven to produce independent news in countries that are highly politically polarized — and some of them are paying a high price for it [...] Nearly half the journalists interviewed for this study reported threats and physical attacks in response to their coverage. More than 20% of the founders and directors we interviewed admitted that they avoided covering certain topics, people, and institutions because of threats and intimidation. Others face punitive lawsuits, cyber-attacks, never-ending audits, and the loss of advertising revenues in retaliation for their coverage. Digital natives in Latin America have an even more important role to play than their counterparts in the over-saturated media markets of the developed world. News ownership is highly concentrated in these countries, and government advertising is frequently used to reward compliant media outlets. Even in the face of these legal, financial, and physical threats, entrepreneurial journalists are building sustainable businesses around quality journalism. The advent of social media and easy-to-use web design tools has made it possible to launch a digital media venture almost entirely on sweat equity. More than 70% of the ventures in this study started with less than $10,000, and more than 10% of those now bring in at least a half million dollars a year in revenues. After analyzing data on traffic, finances, revenue sources, staffing, and years in business, we identified four distinct tiers of business development. Diversified revenue was key to success, especially in the mid tiers, and we found more than 15 distinct revenue sources, including events, training, membership, crowdfunding, and native advertising. More than 65% reported they were earning revenue in at least three ways. In the top tier, where audiences reach more than 20 million visits per month, advertising is the top revenue source, but not the only one. In the mid ranges, there is no dominant business model and diversified revenue sources that combine advertising with audience-driven sources, such as events and crowdfunding, are crucial for sustainability. When we analyzed the lower tiers, we found lots of opportunities for improvement. Despite their dedication to quality journalism, more than 30% brought in less than $10,000 in total revenues in 2016. Broadly speaking, we found two paths to growing these businesses: building audience to drive traffic and advertising, or leveraging the loyalty of the audience to inspire micro-donations and the 15 other ways they are making money." (Executive summary, pages 6-8)
more