Proposing a Business Model Framework for the E-Newspaper Introduction

The newspaper industry is facing a new innovation, i.e. the e-newspaper published on e-paper technology, which holds the potential of replacing the printed newspaper in the future, heavily reducing production and distribution costs, thereby catching the interest of the industry. As the newspaper firms lately have experienced declining subscription and advertising revenues, they have been forced to seek other revenue sources, e.g. by providing online newspapers and mobile news services. Thus, the traditional business model from print has not been successfully transferred to digital media. In this paper, we have used the Business Model Construct to analyze the empirical findings from 19 interviews, 9 workshops and 4 brainstorming sessions with newspaper representatives to propose a business model framework for the e-newspaper. This framework includes four typical business models: International Newspaper, the Interpress Newsagent, Community Micronews and Local Newspaper and corresponding business model components.