What Business Model is Suitable for Online Arab Newspapers? Journalists’ Perspectives

B. Darwish, Elsayed

doi:10.21608/jkom.2022.253093

	What Business Model is Suitable for Online Arab Newspapers? Journalists’ Perspectives
المجلة العربية لبحوث الاعلام والاتصال
Volume 2022, Issue 37, June 2022, Pages 2-26 PDF (463.4 K)
Document Type: بحوث علمیة متخصصة فی مجال الاعلام والاتصال.
DOI: 10.21608/jkom.2022.253093
Author
Elsayed B. Darwish^*
Journalism and Media Professor, Cairo and Zayed University, Egypt and UAE
Abstract
The study aimed to explore the journalists’ perspectives on ways to refinance Arab newspapers’ production and face the digital transformation challenges. The study found that Arab journalists have an ambiguous perception of the appropriate business models for newspapers in the digital age. The journalists ranking of the sources of revenue that newspapers can rely on are not well-suited with the appropriate business models for the digital environment, which could be explained by a lack of knowledge of business models. Most of the journalists’ experiences are derived from working under the conventional models. They do not trust public funding as a successful model and expect the continuity of the free model. The journalists still endorse the conventional business model, which depends on advertising, circulation, and external support. These types of models are difficult to be implemented in the digital era, with the decline of advertising revenue, the unwillingness of the governments to continue subsiding these newspapers, and the growing fall of the newspaper’s circulation. The journalists have some certain reluctance toward the new ecosystem
Keywords
Journalism; Business model; Arab Newspapers; Journalists

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