Local news journalism and newspapers are struggling to update ways to connect to and engage with readers and interested publics that are effective in the digital media environment. Such ways are tested out in the production of the news, in how the news is made accessible to readers and how it comes to be interpreted and used.
This project studies an attempt at two Swedish regional newspapers, both part of newspaper groups, to connect to their readers as paying subscribers. The attempt focus on how the newspapers develop the access aspect of the relation to the readers and where news content/services are bundled with a tablet. In the study this attempt is analyzed in its organizational setting and in relation to other projects/attempts to develop connections and engagement with readers and publics – in production, in accessing the news and in use/impact.
Studies of newspaper subscriptions (American Press Institute 2018), pay models for digital news (Reuters 2017, 2019), bundling of news products and direct/indirect forms of reader access (print, web, app, social media, subscription platforms, libraries, news aggregators) are briefly surveyed in the extended abstrct. As a theoretical lens network media logic (Klinger and Svensson 2015, 2016, 2018) will be used. Interviews with key persons at the newspapers and in the newspaper groups is the empirical ground together with company documents and business media reports outlining the digital transformation of the newspapers and their relations to subscribers and readers.