New media and newspapers are very different in what they offer. As discussed the newspapers have a few advantages over the new media, but the contrary is true as well.
First advantages are the costs of printing and distribution. For the newspapers it is a large part of their budget. The logistic of both aspects takes a lot of time and financial resources.
In a new media business you do not have to account for those costs. Your content only has to be put online, which does not demand a lot more than Internet access and this does not generate many additional charges.
Secondly the costs for the consumer have fallen as well. Internet has become accessible for almost everyone in Switzerland. Mobile Internet is growing as well and the costs are beginning to become accessible for the majority. And since most contents on the Internet or on the mobile platforms are accessible for free, this draws a lot of consumers who are not willing to pay for the contents they are looking for.
The third advantage of the list is the speed of the availability of the information. This is the key advantage of the new media over the newspapers. In today‟s world everybody wants to have what they look for as quickly as possible. The search of information follows the same pattern. People like to be informed of an event as quickly as possible. If something huge happens, a vast majority of consumers will go on the Internet to try to find content on that particular event. The new media has a big edge in this domain over the newspapers because a majority of consumers will always go first to a new media before going to the newspapers to be informed fast on an event that interests them.
The fourth advantage that comes in this listing is the variety of forms in which the new media can present its contents. For the newspapers it is much more difficult to innovate. They can change the paper or editing format, but that is about it. On the other hand new media “is a multiple media because alone it gives access to all other types of media.”(31) There is text of course, but podcasts, videos, blogs, forums, and many other forms can be used as well to present the same content. For many consumers this array of possibilities is now a necessity.
In addition to various forms, new media benefits to a space that is almost infinite: “the space which is far more extensible online that on paper incited press groups to broadcast contents that they could not publish before the web era, for technical or space reasons or both.”(32) All these new opportunities will be discussed a bit further in the next section.
31 Gabszewicz and Sonnac, p.39
32 Vettraino-Soulard, p.53