Mapa y características de los cibermedios locales e hiperlocales en España

Abstract

Durante las dos últimas décadas, el modelo mediático tradicional de la prensa local ha sufrido una profunda crisis que, unida a la económica, ha derivado en el cierre de cabeceras y recortes de personal. La creciente necesidad de una oferta informativa local veraz y la adversa realidad laboral en el sector comunicativo han motivado a muchos periodistas a fundar sus propios medios locales e hiperlocales al amparo de la red. En esta investigación se realiza un estudio exploratorio para elaborar el primer mapa de cibermedios locales e hiperlocales activos en España, con el objetivo de conocer la presencia de este tipo de medios en el Estado. Posteriormente, estos cibermedios se someten a un análisis de contenido para identificar sus características básicas y tendencias de desarrollo. Los resultados evidencian un crecimiento relevante de los cibermedios locales e hiperlocales en el país, así como unos rasgos que reflejan la búsqueda de nuevos modelos informativos desde la proximidad.

Funding Sustainable Online News: Sources of Revenue in Digital-Native and Traditional Media in Spain

“…With around 3000 news sites registered in 2018 [51], the Spanish online media market stands out for its variety and diversification in terms of size, reach, topic scope and ownership) but also for its financial weakness, which is incompatible with the long-term sustainability of media organizations as businesses and increasing job insecurity [51][52][53]. Furthermore, among Spanish digital media, local and regional organizations prevail (73%); this underlines the importance of proximity in this market [52,54,55]. Additionally, although general news predominates in the Spanish market, there is also a broad offer of specialized sites (32%) [51].…”

“…By including quality as a part of their brand identity, non-native outlets find an audience that is ready to pay money, or at least attention, for this sort of coverage [60]. Previous research shows that, in Spain, most digital-native sites have a local reach and the companies publishing them hardly reach economic profitability: 61% had revenues below 100,000 euros, which forces them to diversify their sources of funding [54,61]. Moreover, many of those digital-native sites were launched by founders with little experience in media management [51] or by journalists laid off from mainstream media [53] lacking the knowledge and competencies to develop new revenue streams.…”

“…A second aspect that we aim to analyze are differences between media with national or global reach and those covering a regional or local area. Without any intention to get into a definitional debate about terms as local journalism, community journalism, or hyperlocal journalism (see Negreira-Rey, 2020 [54] for a deeper conceptualization of local-hyperlocal digital media), we understand local-regional journalism as news produced for and about the very local or regional level across a range of media platforms, including online, radio and print. This type of journalism is among the most diverse subfields-from who owns it and produces it, to the forms it takes, its distribution, and the economic models that sustain it [62] (p. 194).…”

“…Consequently, although paywalls create additional digital revenues for local firms, at the current levels, they do not offer a viable funding model in the short term [8]. First, most of their promoters seek more social or civic than economic aims [55]. Second, founding teams are usually small and they rely on citizen cooperation to produce content [55].…”

“…First, most of their promoters seek more social or civic than economic aims [55]. Second, founding teams are usually small and they rely on citizen cooperation to produce content [55]. Third, the small size of the areas they cover limits their audiences and advertisers, which forces them to diversify their revenue streams, adding models such as subscriptions, crowdfunding [52] or alliances with other companies to pursue common objectives, such as networks of local media [55] or media co-operatives [53].…”