By Odo, Paulinus Onyekachi
The relationship between communication, readership and development cannot be overemphasized because development agents not only read, they also communicate such knowledge to the people. Newspaper is one of the media for such knowledge communication. This study x-rayed the effects of online publishing for the period 1997 to 2013 on the sales and revenues (profitability), employment, capital investment as well as productive and technical efficiency of The Punch and Thisday newspapers in Nigeria. The study analyzed annual averages including the median averages before and after online publishing, testing and validating the values using t-test and the two-tailed Wilcoxon signed–ranked test to ascertain the significance of the changes in the observed variables before and after online publishing process. The study also utilized trend analysis for revenue analysis and Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) for productive and technical efficiency analysis. With secondary data through on-site visits, interviews, and mails from the two newspaper houses, the study found that online publishing has significant effects on sales and revenues (profitability), capital investments as well as productive (operational) efficiency of the two Nigerian newspapers. Conversely, online publishing has negative effects on employment and technical efficiency. The study recommends a reduction in cover prices of newspapers which can be possible with intervention in the reduction of production costs and training sessions for media practitioners as well as the introduction of Digital Subscription Model (DSM) by these newspapers, for their online version.