Abstract

The newspapers industry, as all the other media industries, the has been deeply affected by the introduction of digital technologies, at the end of the last century. This technological change also changed the competition within the industry, with new unexpected competitors as social networks and aggregators. Competitors' strategies changed very slowly and the switch from physical to digital has not come to an end. Not yet clear is how profitable could be the advertised based business model with respect to paywalls. What is sure is that physical sales in all western economies are declining quickly. The article ends with some consideration on the opportunity of an industrial policy (or legal) intervention in order to sustain the publishers.