Study on journalism on the Internet

Complementing rather than competing with each other - in summary, this is the result of a two-year research project at the Institute of Communication Science at the University of Münster on the relationship between journalism and the internet. Online offerings from the traditional mass media still tend to dominate in the core area. Weblogs and user platforms accounted for only five percent of journalistic internet offerings. Professional journalism is not in danger of being replaced by the new providers on the Internet. However, advertising customers and readers are increasingly migrating to the Internet.
According to the findings, traditional journalism is facing a dilemma as a result of this new development. On the one hand, it has to get involved on the Internet, but on the other hand it lacks a business model. Although journalistic websites achieve a high reach, the audience has so far shown no willingness to pay. The advantages of the Internet are the increased participation of users and the automation of news selection by search engines.
As part of the study, around 180 Internet editorial offices from Germany were surveyed and around 1200 Internet offerings were evaluated.