How the Coronavirus Crisis is Impacting on European Media
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Slump in advertising revenue, short-time working and lay-offs – media companies throughout Europe find themselves under pressure due to the coronavirus pandemic. The network of the European Journalism Observatory (EJO) hosted by TU Dortmund University has spoken with media experts, journalists, and trade unionists, and its website gives an insight into the economic impacts of the coronavirus crisis on media in Germany, Georgia, the United Kingdom, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Ukraine as well as what financial help the sector can expect – or not.
In 2020, above all print media saw a sharp drop in revenue both in Western and Eastern Europe. According to the German Newspaper Publishers and Digital Publishers Association (BDZV), advertising revenue in Germany fell by over 20 percent for almost all publishing houses and even by over 40 percent for every second publisher. In Poland, regional newspaper publishers’ revenue even dropped by up to 80 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Some weekly local newspapers in Poland sold 40 percent less issues. While in Ukraine national online media lamented declining advertising revenue of up to 50 percent, local media there suffered losses of even 70 to 90 percent.
As a consequence, numerous media companies in a large number of countries were and are affected by short-time working and job losses. British print media have been particularly badly hit, including the Guardian, DMG Media (with newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Metro) and Reach (with newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and Daily Express). Together, they expect up to 800 job losses. An observer of the Polish media market reported that a tenth of staff at Gazeta Wyborcza, a daily newspaper, had been laid off and that Burda Media Poland has shrunk its workforce by a fifth, a total of 50 employees.
Antiquated business models are now taking their revenge
Tina Groll, President of the German Journalists’ Union (dju) and editor at ZEIT ONLINE, says that many media companies are now paying the price for being insufficiently innovative to develop viable business models. On the one hand, people’s desire for quality journalism has increased enormously, she says, and yet on the other hand short-time working has been seen in many editorial offices for months. This is absurd, says Groll.
While in some countries the state has launched special programs to help the media sector through the coronavirus pandemic, in other countries it cannot expect any governmental support at all. The Latvian government has made almost € 1.2 million available in the framework of a media support program, of which print and online news media received about € 520,000. In addition, publishing houses were granted about € 220,000 for supplying newspapers.
In Spain, by contrast, the government has done almost nothing. Apart from reducing the VAT on subscriptions, there has been no help whatsoever, says Victoria Pérez, President of the Platform for the Defense of Free Expression (PDLI), a civic group. In Germany, the national government wants to support newspaper publishers with € 220 million in the coming years – irrespective of the coronavirus crisis.
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