Abstract:

In recent decades we have witnessed the transformation of journalism as an industry and as a profession. Many media outlets got stuck on the way in the fierce path to the digital world, one of the biggest disruptions we have ever witnessed in our era. This paper aims at understanding newspapers’ content distribution strategies, by considering whether digital media is used to segment content according to target audiences and to the particular characteristics of each medium. Case study was the method adopted. Jornal de Notícias (JN) was the first Portuguese non-specialist daily newspaper to go digital and to update its online edition on a daily basis. 20 years later, it is still one of the strongest online players in the industry in Portugal. For the purposes of this study, JN’s content strategy was analyzed for four weeks between August and September 2016. All content published on paper was analysed in comparison to the content published online, disseminated by e-mail and distributed on Facebook. The research was complemented with a daily analysis of the most widely read online news, most successful distribution channels and ways of monetization available on these articles. For each day of the study, the main front page title was analysed and its distribution through online media was measured. For data triangulation purposes, an interview was conducted with the person in charge of JN’s digital channels. Finally, the survey technique was used in order to learn more about the online reading habits and, in particular, JN’s paper version reading habits. It can be concluded that despite conducting a clear online strategy, this medium still privileges the paper newspaper namely due to the monetization constraints, as admittedly it could not survive exclusively from the online business. The study also demonstrates that an effective digital strategy demands considerable resources and digital skills (e.g., data analysis) that are not easily reconciled with the offline strategy needs. Hence, JN is shown as a hard news newspaper using distinct approaches in the online and offline channel that could be summarized as “hard for paper, soft for social network sites”.