Innovaties in de nieuwssector

Innovation by Dutch news producers is the topic of this thesis. Innovation in the news sector is a current topic. There are more and more technologies for news consumption and the use of news has changed in a more fragmented use. News consumers have more news offering to choose from. This caused the change of the news market from a demand-driven market into a more supply-oriented one. On this market, there are new players like Google whose core business is internet. News aggregation sites collect news from existing news producers and place this on their own websites. Social media like Twitter and Facebook are involved in the distribution process of news. In short, the news landscape is changing which calls for innovation. The innovations by news producers that have been analyzed are not analyzed in a traditional way in terms of product, organization, production process or news consumer. The work of Michel et al. (2008) and there ‘service’ concept is used for analyzing innovations. Service are all applications that are applied on the news product by the producer, consumer or other players. These applications make the news product more valuable. Examples of applications applied by news producers are the possibilities for news consumers to store news articles, to share articles with friends or to write an article themselves. An example of an application applied by other players is the public transport that enabled their stations for the distribution of news. The news consumer can gif his own opinion about the news. Service is in short, the exchange of knowledge and skills between the news producer, other parties and the news consumer. For this concept for research is chosen because service can catch the vanishing border between the news producer and the consumer that is characteristic for the shifting news landscape. The research material that is used for this thesis contains four case studies. Three of those are comparable case studies: former innovations are compared to new innovations. The way of how news producers innovate and the (shifting) roles of the news consumer are analyzed. The fourth case study is a description of an innovation process of a news producer who is still developing the news products. The results show that news producers collaborate with their customers. There are placed on the chair of the producer, community builder or advisor. Social media is used to utilize the knowledge and skills of the consumer. Besides this collaboration between news producers and consumers, there is little collaboration with other players that can offer value. The development of new technologies usually takes place within the premises of the own organization. The development of technological applications is a challenge for news producers. Others challenges are the usability of content, tips and opinions given by new consumers. The news producers are looking for the right role for their consumers.