Reconversion in a declining market: the return to profitability of the print newspaper industry

Abstract

The end of the economic crisis initiated in 2008 was not the end of the newspaper crisis. The shifts introduced by digitalisation are increasingly deeper, and advertising spending on newspapers continued to fall during the economic recovery. To study how the firms adapted to this declining market, this article performs an in-depth financial analysis of 98 Spanish print newspaper publishers over the period 2009–2018, focusing on profitability. The results show very low or even negative returns on assets, but a positive trend in profitability is observed from 2014 onwards, despite the stagnation of advertising spending. Companies reduced their costs to a greater extent than the fall in revenues, improving their profit margins. National newspapers increased total asset turnover via decapitalisations, becoming smaller and more efficient.