One of Europe's big newspaper successes the latest decades, Norwegian tabloid paper Verdens Gang (VG) is cutting back on the staff -- between 70 and 90 people will have to go. This is expected to save $16.5 million USD. Daily circulation is down from 350,000 to 300,000, which is still good in a country of 4.5 million people.
At the same time, VG's news site VG Nett remains a huge success, delivering a hefty $8.4 million USD profit -- a 52 percent profit margin. This is done with a staff of 30 reporters, all employed by a separate company with separate editor, not affected by the downsizing.
Some voices from within paper-VG now call for the site to pay for the paper content, since it gives the site a stable supply of unique, high-quality stories -- an advantage for the site, surely.
The question is: how important is the paper's content to the site? In the discussion that ensued on the Norwegian e-mail list Normedia, a VG Nett reporter took stock from one day of production on VG Nett. Of the 106 news stories released on the site one day last week, 13 were taken from the paper, and 60 stories were written by Web staff. The last 33 were wire stories from NTB. We will have to assume that's a typical day.
13 stories out of 106 is 12 percent. That's obviously a low number compared to sites with slimmer staff and more shovelware -- but is it high enough to be significant? High enough to be indispensable? And is it a "natural" ratio, if such a thing exists?
Just curious...
