This article explores three national news agencies in Europe (Press Association Group in the United Kingdom, Austria Presse Agentur in Austria and Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå in Sweden) in order to find the reasons why these agencies decided to transform themselves from traditional newswires into diversified media businesses. We ask why these agencies are able to operate under market principles, with substantial profit margins, and also to contribute to a sustainable national media system, while agencies in some other countries struggle. We draw on semi-structured interviews with 26 senior managers of the agencies and use several strategic management frameworks, including five forces and dynamic capabilities. We find that, in all three agencies, early crises led to a sensing of news agencies’ weakened bargaining power with media clients and the decline of industry attractiveness and triggered a timely search for new revenue sources through diversification. These successful new businesses are based on a strong news-agency brand, on technological capabilities, and on resources originating from the agencies’ firm relationship with the news media. We argue that, in all three cases, visionary leadership and an ability to orchestrate a new relationship with media owners have been key capabilities created in these early crises.
Digital platforms have disrupted traditional news organizations, with new platform-based models gaining ground. However, the incumbents can defend their positions and reap the benefits of multisided market structures by establishing a platform business model themselves. We examine a case study of the Austrian News Agency (APA), which gradually formulated a strategy that resulted in a platform-based business model. Platform features were strategized and innovated over time and in phases, with the intent of creating value for customers on both sides of the platform. We found that APA's platform transformation was enabled by a visionary value proposition backed by a trusted institution's legitimacy and a co-operative organizational model that provided added incentives for the participating news media companies. The strategy and the business model emerged on the basis of external developments and internal realizations concerning the feasibility of the new platform strategy. Based on our results, we develop a framework for an incumbent strategy formation process towards a platform business model. This framework demonstrates the incumbent organization's emergent, as well as deliberate, strategic ability to introduce platform features into its business model, based on unique intra-firm synergies with established parts of the business, and highlighting a potential for "incumbent advantage."
This article examines the distribution of advertising in newspapers in Turkey and the impact of the government on the allocation, in particular, of official announcements and of advertising by partially state-owned enterprises and private companies loyal to the ruling party, as well as pressure on other commercial advertisers, during the rule of the Justice and Development Party between 2002 and 2020. It demonstrates that the government has, in the last decade, largely used the advertising sector as a “carrot and stick” tactic to control newspapers through the distribution of official announcements and advertising by state-owned enterprises. It further finds that the state has emerged in recent years as the largest advertiser financing the “captured media,” control of media ownership has proved to be not enough to ensure docile news media. Turkey has shifted to competitive authoritarianism in recent years, and this article demonstrates the selective allocation of advertising, which is a strong component of suppressing the independent media. The article uncovers the impact of government on advertising, using two data sets to show: (i) the total spend on official announcements received by each newspaper and (ii) how much advertising space in square centimeters state-owned enterprises have placed in each newspaper. Interviews with editors-in-chief of newspapers also expose the direct role of government in the distribution of advertising.
This article investigates the relationship between the Ottoman state and the operations of the most powerful international news agencies of its time, Havas and Reuters, within the Ottoman Empire. The two agencies started to operate in Istanbul during the Crimean War and soon became the most influential sources of news both within and outside the Ottoman Empire. The article examines how the Ottoman state, perceiving them as a threat, attempted to resist their dominant role in news-production by collaborating with other different agencies and actors. When this failed, it tried to found a national news agency.
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