Deciding on a course of action – Consequences of strategic choices in news organizations
R. Hummel/ S. Kirchhoff/ D. Prandner,
Fachbereich Kommunikationswissenschaft, Universität Salzburg
Contact: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]
Media organizations face both economic pressure and pressure from technical innovation and the
applications tied to those innovations. As a consequence they have to act in a rapidly changing
environment. Their efforts are made even more difficult by the fact that what may work in one
cultural context does not necessarily work in another.
The third-party funded research project “Best Practice in der Krise: Eine Analyse medienunternehmerischer Strategien” asks how news organizations respond to a changing environment.
The first step is to trace and systematize the journalistic and economic choices of media
organizations through self-reports about strategies and their consequences from media companies,
systematically arranging and clustering them. Those findings are supplemented by the discussion
found in scientific literature. In sum, seven fields of action for media organizations, including various
strategic options were identified.
In the second step 40 case studies from 12 countries are selected for a detailed look at the
combination of strategies and their respective consequences (via external research and guided
interviews on e.g. implementation process, evaluation of strategies).
Last, the findings are discussed with Austrian experts end stakeholders in terms of their applicability
in the cultural and economic context of the Austrian media system.
Example: Overview – tracing strategies for financing the news business
Example: Case Study – paid content of the New York Times