U.S. Newspapers and the development of online editions

Abstract

Media managers in the 21st century will need to constantly assess and respond to emerging technologies that have the potential to disrupt the industry. This project examined the innovation‐management processes that the newspaper industry used to respond to the Internet, using an analytical framework of recommended innovation management techniques derived from previous research. The study found that newspapers’ innovation‐management processes were generally haphazard and that industry executives should be better prepared in the future to manage innovation. From a theoretical perspective, the study also found that organizational responses to emerging technology were related to the senior executive's perception of the nature of the technology. The paper concludes that future innovation management research should control for variances in the technology's perceived nature.