Revenue streams within Spain’s journalism industry, according to its editors

Journalism business models have been a major concern since the emergence of the Internet, affecting digital native as well as legacy media. Over the course of the past decade, media outlets have implemented a number of strategies and payment systems for access to content in order to diversify its revenue sources. This paper analyses the strategic response of Spain’s journalism industry through a digital survey carried out with managers and/ or editors of 37 Spanish media outlets (n=37). The first aim of this paper is to understand how editors view their own business model and the elements that comprise it, par­ticularly the revenue streams. The data analysis reveals that the business models with a very high dependence on advertising want to reduce this dimension in the future to moderate levels, but without eliminating it altogether. The managers and editors of Spain’s journalism industry would like for their business models to pivot more towards readers, as shown by the data. This paper contributes to the theory of business models at news companies and clarifies the differences between the business model and revenue source concepts in the field of journalism.