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Title: 

Aggregators and the News Industry: Charging for Access to Content

Authors: Rutt, James
Keywords: Internet, Newspapers, Aggregators, Paywalls
Issue Date: 21-Dec-2011
Series/Report no.: NET Institute Working Papers;11_19
Abstract: The Internet has drastically altered the nature of competition in the news industry. This article develops a model of price and quality competition between rms in the online news industry. In equilibrium, rms randomise in their pricing strategies and this generates the cross- sectional mixture of advertiser and subscription funded models we ob- serve. The model also plausibly explains why pricing strategies dier across content areas. Finally, an important part of my explanation is that aggregators, such as Google and Digg.com, allow consumers to search amongst articles and direct consumers towards high quality articles. The model's results have implications for the ongoing public debate about the eects of aggregators on the news industry; although aggregators may harm rms, consumers may benet.
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2451/31413
Appears in Collections:NET Institute Working Papers Series

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