For more than ten years now, the regional quality daily newspapers in Germany have been in a severe industry crisis: both readership and advertising revenues are declining, making it difficult to produce quality content. A closer look quickly reveals that a previously successful strategic pattern of the publishers has become a critical path dependency since 2001. Although the industry has initiated some innovations in response to the crisis, it has not been able to establish a sustainable economic basis for daily quality journalism. Have they overlooked the opportunities of digitalization, or does daily quality journalism have no future in the digital age? Wasko Rothmann examines the case of the publishing development of regional quality daily newspapers to explore how organizations act in strategic lock-ins.