We come from a world in which the press had a clearly identified place and role. Print editions, teams of journalists, an economic model based on the sale of the newspaper and advertising space and, above all, an essential position on the information market: that of an offer of facts and analyses that was only rivaled by other media (other press titles, radio, television).

The arrival of what we still sometimes call the new information and communication technologies (NICTs), some 20 years ago, changes everything – or almost everything. We like to talk about revolution, an expression that is used in all kinds of ways and yet corresponds to the speed and violence of change. The change modifies the acronym that has now become NBIC (nanotechnologies, biotechnologies, computer science and cognitive sciences), in order to illustrate the heuristic mix of new or renewed disciplines that open up the major change that is artificial intelligence (AI).

It all started slowly, without the press really realizing and caring. A few rare newspapers offered a site to respond to the Internet of the early 2000s. The site was most often poorly made in terms of access when compared to paper format: clumsily duplicated, long to download, without ergonomics designed to facilitate reading or search for information. No one really believed in it and paper format kept its appeal.

Then, very quickly, access to digital networks became easier. Flow rates increased exponentially, as did data storage capacity, and digital tools (tablets, telephones) multiplied. And while technology made huge leaps, the prices of access providers and devices fell. Very quickly, we have all become connected, everywhere, all the time.

Therefore, periodic information is confronted with continuous information. Journalists’ information comes up against information from everyone, and already that of artificial intelligence and robots. These are fascinating changes. An economic sector that was based on historical foundations of more than 150 years, and solid practices that had lasted and adapted to the arrival of newcomers such as radio and television in their time, are broken.

We are talking about looking at the current press and wondering about its future. We are not the only ones questioning ourselves. The whole profession is wondering. Journalists, managers and investors. Very good books mark out a path of reflection that began with the arrival of the Internet¹, notably one of the first books on online press, De Laubier (2000). Many researchers have examined the press crisis. Politicians, for their part, regularly update the laws that secure and supervise the press, as well as public financial support policies.

Why did we write this book? Because we are reaching a turning point that is no longer just that of the Internet. All connected, all journalists, all in search of attention, notoriety, 15 minutes of fame. All mobile, all nomads. All in ultra-modern solitude, all in networks. All influenced, all influencers. All human, all robots. All personalized assistants. All transformed into data. All objects, all players. All of them, but not really all of them. Not for everyone, not everywhere. Therefore, the question is: how is today’s Smart Press developing and what are the immense challenges it faces in the digitalization of information?

How did we write this book? We wanted an original approach: to combine the perspective and competencies of two worlds. That of a researcher, university professor and media economist with 20 years’ experience and that of a journalist, who follows the media in a major national daily newspaper that knows the field, knows the players and knows their concerns. Their advantage: being immersed in the questions of media decision-makers, both observant of and concerned by the reflections of journalists, his expertise in a profession shaken by change. His analyses will help us to reflect on the “paradox of choices” ranging from everything digital to paper, and from print to web solutions, sometimes within the same press group.

The approach is original: the objective has been to scan all recent economic research on the theme of the media and the press, in order to retain the main points. In a world under constant scrutiny, economists’ research sheds light on the possible futures to which the media can turn.

Media economics is a relatively new discipline. The media, and the press in particular, are at the heart of many disciplines. Economic science is the latest arrival.

Political science is the first in this field of analysis: its core target is the questioning of the evolution of political ideas and the position of dissemination of ideas in society. A second issue for political scientists is the position of the media in its role of monitoring public decisions, as Jack Balkin mentioned in a 1999 article (Balkin 1999). For the author, the positive effects of the mass media on political life are threefold: the media explain current events and can therefore help individuals to understand public policies; journalists participate in debates; and the media report on economic policies and thus participate in the assessment and monitoring of public policies.

Philosophers also invite themselves into the debate (Chupin et al. 2013; Mulhmann 2017). We need to know if and how the media play a role. The answer is, of course, in favor of freedom of expression, defended by law or even by the constitution. Political scientists mix in with lawyers here (Letteron 2017; Cox and Goldman 1996). A corollary issue is the question of pluralism, which is essential in order to stimulate public debate. Political science is concerned with how to promote and defend it. Media history is also one of the first disciplines that focused on the cradle of media. This very active discipline visits times from the conquest² of the media and the press, up to the most contemporary events (Albert 2018; Blandin 2016; Eveno 2017; Jeanneney 2015; Kalifa 2011).

Sociology (Maigret 2015; Neveu 2013) and information and communication sciences (SIC) adopt an indispensable additional path by analyzing the behavior and strategies of information providers and receivers. Alain Rallet (Rallet 2006) proposes an economy of communication, in other words, an embedding of economic relations in social relations. Even closer to the media, the practices of journalists and editors are observed, questioned and theorized (Ruellan 2011). By analyzing communication practices, the economic constraints are highlighted, reducing the number of newspapers, journalists and means of investigation.

The socio-economy of the media is taking hold of the press crisis, vigilant about media concentration and the characteristics of press group shareholders, and concerned about information now occurring within media industries. Gérome Guilbert, Frank Rebillard and Fabrice Rochelandet (Guilbert et al. 2016) define the socio-economic approach as an emphasis of the first discipline over the second, in other words, emphasizing the position of social interactions rather than the analysis market functioning and individual choices. They justify this approach by the particular nature of cultural property in view of its role in society. Bernard Miege (Miege 2004), a professor at the University of Grenoble, identifies the birth of the political economy of communication and media in the 1970s and, together with Philippe Bouquillon (Bouquillion 2005), a professor at the University of Paris 13, points out the importance of this critical approach, which highlights the weight of the economy on existing media, creating effects of domination and preventing the emergence of alternative culture or media.

A powerful North American movement in the political economy of culture led by Herbert Schiller, Noam Chomsky and Robert McChesney (McChesney and Schiller 2003) stigmatizes the role of finance and major media groups. The cultural studies (Maigret and Rebillard 2015; Mattelart and Neveu 2003; Van Damme 2004) movement, developed at the same time, rejects economic reductionism and focuses on an analysis according to the triptych: class–gender–race.

Economists are the last to enter the arena. As Stuart Cunningham and Terry Flew (Cunningham and Flew 2015) point out, media economics is mainly a neo-classical microeconomic approach: in other words, one which is based on comparing the choices of individuals in a market. What can economics bring to a field of analysis that is already heavily and judiciously crowded by other disciplines? The main interest lies in an additional angle of analysis of the founding disciplines of reflection on media. Nurtured by the conclusions of other disciplines, the economic approach complements that of political scientists, historians, lawyers, sociologists, socio-economists and researchers in information and communication sciences.

Although these founding disciplines sometimes converse with each other because they use common tools, and although researchers mix studies and results, dialog with the economy is rarer. There are two main reasons: the media economy is recent and has taken time to establish itself, as is generally the case for any new field of study; but above all, the economy uses its own methodology and tools. The scientific methodology is based on the analysis of the clash of individuals’ behaviors within a complex coordination process, called the market. The market can be competitive or oligopolistic, or even monopolistic. The goods traded can be public or private, tangible or intangible, with property rights or free (such as software of the same name), regulated by public authorities or rules specific to a profession and by national or international standards. The combinations are almost infinite and it is this profusion of state of nature that has pushed researchers to introduce mathematics into the discipline.

The first works of the first economists in the 18th Century were written in literary form with philosophical content, or based on the experience and practice of exchanges. The contemporary economy now mainly uses mathematical tools to model human choices and test individual or collective, private or public policy changes, supposed to lead to more growth, less unemployment, less poverty, less pollution, etc. Thus, mathematics makes it possible to reflect on a balanced or sustainable growth path or to model cooperative, altruistic or predatory behavior in a complex way in order to devise actions designed to stimulate the former and slow down the latter. To achieve this, economics is moving closer to other disciplines in order to develop recent segments of economics, such as behavioral economics or neuro-economics. However, although the mathematical tool has the advantage of being powerful and proposes to summarize reality in situations that can be modeled and analyzed, it often makes it difficult to access the content of economists’ research. A solid education in mathematics and econometrics is now required to navigate this discipline, which is highly invested by engineers and economists. The mathematical tool, although largely used, is also criticized by economists, who are concerned about a modeling deviation whose mathematical complexity does not allow it to grasp the complexity of human choices. Some call for a return to a methodology based on the economic analysis of institutions that are chosen by individuals, rather than continuing to densify models by adding and testing new hypotheses.

This ivory tower approach, by limiting access, has the adverse effect of sometimes suggesting that economists contradict themselves. The economy therefore has immense progress to make in disseminating its own scientific results. A peripheral issue is the position of economists in the media. An article written in 1996 by Paul Boltz, entitled Economics and the media (Boltz 1996), which takes up the position developed a few years earlier by Harry Wallich (Wallich 1972), questions the place of economic speech and research in the media. He regretted that there was little or no room for complex scientific speech. Economics is a science of the complexity of decision-making that is not compatible with the simplification that is often requested by the media. It is up to economists to make educational efforts, which many of them are now beginning to do, mainly through the implementation of the web and social networks, by multiplying the number of blogs in which they present the state of their research.