AMERICAN PRESS INSTITUTE – 09/03/2020
ALEX CURRY
This piece is part of API’s Research Review series, which highlights academic research that could be relevant and useful to the news industry. We also hope that this series will spark ideas among academics with an interest in researching the news.
Battling steep and continuing declines in advertising revenue, many newspaper companies have turned to paid subscriptions (digital and print) to help offset financial losses. Yet attracting subscribers remains a challenge, particularly when considering the enormous amount of information competing for people’s attention — and that people can access much of this information for free. What is it, then, that makes people willing to pay for news?