scholarly journals Journalism Expands in Spite of the Crisis: Digital-Native News Media in Spain

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Negredo ◽  
María-Pilar Martínez-Costa ◽  
James Breiner ◽  
Ramón Salaverría

Digital-native news organizations have grown steadily in Spain since the mid-1990s and they have become established as a major force in the media market. Paradoxically, their biggest expansion coincided with the Great Recession (2008–2014). In fact, their numbers increased most during 2012–2013, when traditional media were cutting staff in response to the economic crisis, and unemployment rates in the media sector as a whole hit their peak. However, these digital-native news startups have yet to prove their sustainability and stability. This study uses our own database of 3,862 native and non-native digital news outlets in Spain and the Reuters Institute Digital News Report to analyze a number of characteristics of these media, such as the percentage that have gone inactive, the relative popularity of legacy brands vs. digital natives, multi-platform synergies, content subject matter, geographical location, ownership, and funding sources. Based on these quantitative parameters, this study reviews the structural strengths and weaknesses of digital-native media in the Spanish news market. Taking into account these findings, we conclude that the surge in digital-native news media observed in Spain during the Great Recession followed the pattern of creative destruction described by several economists.

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110271
Author(s):  
Nick Hagar ◽  
Johannes Wachs ◽  
Emőke-Ágnes Horvát

Digital news outlets rely on a variety of outside contributors, from freelance journalists, to political commentators, to executives and politicians. These external dependencies create a network among news outlets, traced along the contributors they share. Using connections between outlets, we demonstrate how contributors’ publishing trajectories tend to align with outlet political leanings. We also show how polarized clustering of outlets translates to differences in the topics of news covered and the style and tone of articles published. In addition, we demonstrate how contributors who cross partisan divides tend to focus on less explicitly political topics. This work addresses an important gap in the media polarization literature, by highlighting how structural factors on the production side of news media create an ecosystem shaped by political leanings, independent of the priorities of any one person or organization.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anette Novak

User participation in the journalistic context has theoretically been possible since the emergence of the Internet. The few interface formats which have been developed to link newsrooms and citizens have, however, not followed the same explosive development as other parts of the media landscape. One reason often referred to by the scientific community is the defensive newsroom culture. This essay presents an alternative interpretation and argues that bridging the gap between interaction design research, media and communications research, and practitioners within digital news media, could shed new light on the stalled process of newsroom co-creation with users.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (20) ◽  
pp. 11328
Author(s):  
Alfonso Vara-Miguel ◽  
Cristina Sánchez-Blanco ◽  
Charo Sádaba Sádaba Chalezquer ◽  
Samuel Negredo

Digital news publishers strive to balance revenue streams in their business models: as standard advertising declines, alternatives for sustaining digital journalism arise in the forms of sponsored content, user donations and payments—one-off purchases, subscriptions or memberships, public or private grants, electronic commerce, events and consulting. An exhaustive study found 2874 active online news publications in Spain, and it observed the adoption of such models in early 2021. Advertising remains the most popular source of income for digital news operations (85.8%) and most sites rely on just one or two revenue streams (74.5%). We compare the cases in our census by their origin (digital-native or non-native), geography (local/regional or national/global) and topic scope (generalist or specialized). We find that traditional, national and specialized online media have a broader and more innovative revenue mix than digital-native, regional or local and general-interest news outlets. The comprehensiveness of this pioneering study sheds light for the first time on the risk that the lack of diversification and innovation in funding sources may imperil the financial sustainability of some online news operations in Spain, mostly those with a smaller scope and no backing from a traditional business, according to the results we present here.


Tripodos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Carlos Lopezosa ◽  
Lluís Codina ◽  
Mario Pérez-Montoro

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the visibility, and of other SEO indicators, of the culture sections of Spain’s leading digital newspapers —specifically, elmundo.es, elpais. com, lavanguardia.com, abc.es, el­confidencial.com and 20minutos.es— based on data collected by the media analytics company, comScore, and the web traffic metric, Alexa Rank. The analysis employs a set of positioning in­dicators: namely, a visibility index, keywords, social signals, keyword profiles, URLs, SERP-Snippets, reference domains and best anchor texts, as made availa­ble by SISTRIX, an SEO analytics audit toolbox. Thus, we were able to deter­mine which of the digital newspapers’ culture sections has the best visibility. Likewise, we were able to identify which of these media are best positioned on Google, presumably as a result of more effective positioning strategies. We con­clude with a discussion of our results and, on the basis of these findings, re­commend ways in which the visibility of journalistic information can be optimi­sed in search engines.   SEO i cibermitjans: visibilitat de la informació cultural dels principals diaris d’Espanya Aquest article realitza una anàlisi com­parativa de visibilitat i altres indicadors SEO de la secció de cultura dels principals cibermitjans espanyols: elmundo.es, elpais.com, lavanguardia.com, abc. es, elconfidencial.com i 20minutos. es. Les anàlisis s’han dut a terme amb la utilització d’un conjunt d’indicadors de posicionament (visibilitat, paraules clau, senyals socials, paraules clau, url, snippets, dominis de referència i mi­llors textos àncora) utilitzant l’eina de auditoria i anàlisi de posicionament en cercadors, SISTRIX. Ens preguntem quin d’aquests mitjans té millor una secció de notícies culturals amb millor visibilitat. L’estudi dut a terme amb els indicadors seleccionats permet, d’aquesta manera, presentar una anàlisi comparativa del periodisme cultural i identificar quins d’aquests mitjans presenten millors posicions a Google, presumiblement, com a resultat d’estratègies de posicio­nament. Finalitzem amb una discussió dels resultats juntament amb unes re­comanacions finals per optimitzar la vi­sibilitat de la informació periodística en els cercadors.


2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-332
Author(s):  
Stacy Gilbert ◽  
Alexander Watkins

Digital-native news has become widely read and award-winning sources for news, and it is important to understand if news aggregator databases provide access to these emerging news outlets. This study compares four news aggregators’ coverage of popular and Pulitzer Prize finalists’ digital-native news organizations to print-native news outlets. It found only 14 out of 47 born-digital news organizations are available in the aggregators, and of those outlets, only four have a 100% date coverage.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 393-409
Author(s):  
Terese Mendiguren Galdospin ◽  
Irati Agirreazkuenaga Onaindia ◽  
Koldo Meso Ayerdi

Ongoing downsizing in the media sector has sparked a new start-up culture in the field of journalism. Over the past few years an increasing number of news organizations seeking to leverage social and symbolic rather than financial capital and cultivate employee as well as audience loyalty have entered the market (Wagemans, Witschge and Deuze, 2016). This paper examines El Diario (eldiario.es) and El Confidencial (elconfidencial.com). Qualitative methods involving the on-site observation in their newsrooms and semi-structured interviews with their journalists were employed. Findings indicate that both see themselves as alternative news providers whose emphasis El Diario draws heavily upon the symbolic capital of its founder Ignacio Escolar, El Confidencial, has banked primarily on its social capital.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago Tejedor ◽  
Augusto Ventín ◽  
Laura Cervi ◽  
Cristina Pulido ◽  
Fernanda Tusa

From its onset on the 1990s, both digital native (with sister headings on the analog platform) as digital native news media have experienced a constant transformation process. The accelerated technological evolution linked to the changing information consumption habits of the users demanded a constant reinvention capability. Furthermore, the need for profit and the drop in advertisement sales have pushed the media to redefine their structure, content and social media presence. The Ibero-American scene has experienced a sprout of a mixture of digital native news media. They are journalistic projects, conceived from and on the Internet, which have reached considerable renown and becoming reference media on the information level. Internet prompted a reduction of the costs related to the creation of media outlets. However, the establishment of a sustainable business model is one of the main challenges. The research presented looks at the business models of Ibero-American digital native news media based on a comparative analysis of 14 case studies, alongside interviews with their founders. The findings include, among other things, a tendency for business models based on diverse and hyper-specialized content targeted at micro-audiences. This research found an interest in horizontality, participation and user engagement, and noticed the need for these media to diversify their income sources.


2015 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 3-8
Author(s):  
Richard Ohmann

In a famous imaginary exchange, F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "The rich are different from us."  Ernest Hemingway replied, "Yes, they have more money."   Most critics have thought the epigram attributed to Fitzgerald more perceptive about class in the United States than the one attributed to Hemingway.  But if we're looking for a wry take on how class has been understood, in the media and among college students, Hemingway's comment is pretty good.  


2016 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 725-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sei-Hill Kim ◽  
Matthew W. Telleen

Our content analysis examines how American news media have framed the question of who is responsible for causing and solving the school bullying problem. We identified presence of considerable victim blaming in news coverage. Among potential causes examined, victims and their families were mentioned most often as being responsible. When talking about how to solve the problem, the media were focusing heavily on schools and teachers, while bullies and their families—the direct source of the problem—were mentioned least often. We also found that liberal newspapers were focusing more than conservative papers on social-level responsibilities, while conservative papers were more likely than liberal papers to attribute responsibility to individuals, suggesting that the political orientations of news organizations can affect which level of responsibility will be highlighted. Drawing upon the notion of frame building, we discuss in detail how several internal and external factors of news organizations can affect their selective uses of frames.


Author(s):  
Taina Bucher

Algorithmic power and politics stems in part from how algorithms acquire the capacity to disturb and to compose new sensibilities as part of situated practices, particularly in terms of how they become invested with certain political and moral capacities. Looking at how algorithms materialize in the institutional setting of the news media, the chapter considers how algorithms are made to matter. Based on field observations and 20 interviews with digital editors and managers at leading Scandinavian news organizations the chapter explores how institutional actors are responding to the proliferation of data and algorithms. The analysis shows how, on the one hand, news organizations feel the pressure to reorient their practices toward the new algorithmic logic governing the media landscape at large. On the other hand, algorithms work to disturb and question established boundaries and norms of what journalism is and ought to be.


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