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Newspapers that make the move to online-only risk losing 75 percent of their revenue and a decline in Web traffic, according to researchers from City University in London.

Their study focused on the Finnish financial newspaper Taloussanomat, which stopped its print version and went online- only in December 2007. The move was made after the paper had suffered significant losses.

By going online-only the papers costs were reduced by 50 percent but its online traffic decreased by 22 percent and revenues fell by more than 75 percent.

For a newspaper to make the transition to online -only worthwhile it would have to be operating at a significant loss, according to the researchers.

Neil Thurman

"Only if your income is 31% or more lower than your costs, based on this case at least, would you be better off going online-only," said Neil Thurman, senior lecturer in electronic publishing at City and one of the study’s authors.

"I don’t think it can be dismissed as an aberration," added Thurman. "What we’re saying is that unique users were down and page impressions were down … You can definitely say they underperformed."

The researchers found a number of key factors that worked against the Finnish title’s strategy to move online, said Thurman.

"Just having the print product out there on news stands does promote the website. They also cut their newsroom staff, and so the quality of content did suffer."

"But probably the most important factor is that it’s a different medium that is used in a different way. You might spend one and a half minutes a day with the brand online, instead of half an hour a day with a printed product."

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