Newspaper finance

[Sarah L]

How are newspapers financed? Is it basically just advertising and the cover price?

[SaxyJag]

Our local rag is part of a major newspaper group which, I suppose, subsidises the struggling papers until they're no longer viable. Otherwise, I think yes, they pretty much fund themselves via advertising and sales. Ours makes extra by publishing local interest books and videos and special supplements, all part funded by advertising.

Don't know whether the nationals benefit from any extra funding anywhere though.

[jason1980]

It is basically advertising and the cover price, if you think that a 6 day newspaper for 100,000 people approx in my area that sells at 35pence would take in nearly 1 million pounds a month. But generally some papers are owned by larger groups so the income is grouped and apportioned accordingly.

[Pressgang1]

This is one of those 'chicken and egg' problems - if the paper doesn't sell, advertisers won't put ads in and if there are no ads, the paper won't get published.

Adverts make up the bulk of a newspaper's revenue. The cover price would barely pay staff wages on most national newspapers.

|And of course if there's no ad revenue, you can't pay staff to write a paper people want to buy etc etc etc. It's a tough business to be in (:-)