A warning for any newspapers thinking of going online-only – one Finnish daily that tried it has fared so badly it’s now being merged back in to a printed title in its parent’s stable.
Business paper Taloussanomat stopped printing to focus on digital in December 2007 and quickly saw its costs fall 52 percent. But, according to City University research we covered last month, the new Taloussanomat.fi also lost 22 percent of its users and 75 percent of its revenue. Now, as City researcher Neil Thurman emailed us this weekend to say, owner Sanoma has given up, merging Taloussanomat.fi with Ilta-Sanomat, a mass-market tabloid that is Finland’s second-biggest newspaper. Here’s Taloussanomat.fi’s own coverage.
President Mikael Pentikäinen said the company – which has extensive newspaper, magazine and broadcast interests – must double to