Newspaper Subsidies and Newspaper Quality
futureofcapitalism.com

The Monday Note takes a look at newspaper subsidies in Europe and finds, essentially, that the countries where newspapers get the biggest subsidies from the government are the ones where readers seem the least interested in reading newspapers:

The OECD data show too many subsidies lead to low operating profit, no workforce adjustments and decreasing readership.

Italy and France are the perfect examples. Compared to Sweden, Italy has 4 times less readers par 1000 people but 12 times more subsidies per reader.

For France, the numbers are slightly better: 3 times less readers than Sweden and 5 times more direct subsidies (according to a conservative estimates, 10% of the revenue of the French dailies comes from public funding). ...

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Times Paywall, French Tax System
futureofcapitalism.com

Quote of the Day: "The New York Times paywall is like the French tax system: expensive, utterly complicated, disconnected from the reality and designed to be bypassed." — Frédéric Filloux, writing in the "Monday Note."

And this: "Loopholes abound....use three browsers as the cookies placed by the NYTimes on each are not interconnected; if you have Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, that's 80 stories a month! The paywall is fading away."

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Times Paywall, French Tax System
futureofcapitalism.com

Quote of the Day: "The New York Times paywall is like the French tax system: expensive, utterly complicated, disconnected from the reality and designed to be bypassed." — Frédéric Filloux, writing in the "Monday Note."

And this: "Loopholes abound....use three browsers as the cookies placed by the NYTimes on each are not interconnected; if you have Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari, that's 80 stories a month! The paywall is fading away."

Read More...

Newspaper Subsidies and Newspaper Quality
futureofcapitalism.com

The Monday Note takes a look at newspaper subsidies in Europe and finds, essentially, that the countries where newspapers get the biggest subsidies from the government are the ones where readers seem the least interested in reading newspapers:

The OECD data show too many subsidies lead to low operating profit, no workforce adjustments and decreasing readership.

Italy and France are the perfect examples. Compared to Sweden, Italy has 4 times less readers par 1000 people but 12 times more subsidies per reader.

For France, the numbers are slightly better: 3 times less readers than Sweden and 5 times more direct subsidies (according to a conservative estimates, 10% of the revenue of the French dailies comes from public funding). ...

Read More...