Valérie-Anne Bleyen and Leo Van Hove in the international press

"One striking piece of research, delivered by economist Valérie-Anne Bleyen from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, showed that newspapers’ approach to raising online revenue from readers — should they charge for content, and if so how? — is heavily determined by an apparent herd mentality.

 

Bleyen and her co-author, Leo van Hove, studied the websites of the national daily papers in nine large European countries and found that, when it comes to charging readers online, papers are most likely to do what their competitors do. In a time of uncertainty, mimicry seems safer than innovation."