The Emergence of a News Website Ecosystem: An Exploratory Study of Hespress |
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| Authors: | Mohammed Ibahrine |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Mass Communication, American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, UAE mibahrine@aus.edu |
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| Abstract: | ABSTRACT This paper examines the emergence of a news ecosystem, focusing on Hespress, Morocco’s first, largest, and most popular news website and its current economic success. My analysis investigates Hespress’s emergence and growth into a significant source for news content, reaching an unprecedented number of readers in Morocco and abroad. This paper argues that the success of Hespress’s business model is grounded in a particularly well-developed understanding of social media, the changing habits of digital readers, and a strategic combination of investigative reporting and curated user-generated content. My findings, then, show how Hespress used a strategy that can serve as a sustainable revenue model which was diversified to include other sources of revenue such as e-commerce, branded events, and native advertising, combined with distribution strategies that rely heavily on social and other digital platforms. |
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| Keywords: | News websites news ecosystem social media user-generated content revenues |
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