Effects of In-house and Wire Content Mix on Online Newspaper Subscriptions

Declining circulation and advertising revenue have led many newspapers to cut costs by reducing in-house staff and relying more on wire content. In-house production provides unique content, while wire (non-exclusive) content offers broad coverage at lower cost. Using data from a regional U.S. newspaper, we examine how the mix of in-house and wire content affects subscription decisions. To address reader-side selection bias, we use local precipitation as an excluded variable to indirectly randomize readers’ exposure to content mix. We find that a 1% increase in the share of in-house articles raises daily subscriptions by 0.024% (≈9% of baseline) and by another 0.009% (≈4% of baseline) under a paywall. Against this overall trend, wire Business and Sports articles also increase conversion, suggesting opportunities for selective sourcing. Effects are weaker for local readers and for visitors from social media. Finally, readers from aggregators respond to in-house content and paywalls much like direct visitors, indicating that differentiation and paywalls remain effective even as readers turn to aggregators to discover news.

• 저널MIS Quarterly · 1–19
• 토픽Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing · Marketing
• DOI10.25300/misq/2025/18870
• 저자Xiaoli Yang, Nachiketa Sahoo, Timothy Simcoe