Disruptive Innovations and Paradigm Shifts in Journalism as a Business: From Advertisers First to Readers First and Traditional Operational Models to the AI Factory

Since the early years of the 21st century, the newspaper industries of Western liberal democracies have been in a perpetual crisis caused by disruptive digital innovators outside the industry. Until recently, the industry and researchers have conveyed a predominantly pessimistic view of the future. This paper argues that after numerous unsuccessful innovations, the industry is now in the middle of a global paradigm shift with a huge impact on journalism as a business and showing a promising path forward. The new “Readers First Paradigm” is replacing “Advertisers First” The former constitutes a new way of doing business, consisting of two main changes: a revised value proposition focusing on reader preferences and subscriptions; a fully digitized operational model built around AI and machine learning. The article shows that until recently, the paradigm shift has been largely overlooked by researchers in the field. Further, a theoretical framework of industrial paradigm shifts is developed to describe and explain the new paradigm’s emergence and growth. Additionally, a generic “ideal-type” systemic description of the paradigm is provided, identifying the individual components and how they work together.