The Carnival of Journalism, a group of journalism bloggers who collectively tackle a particular topic each month, have convened to discuss this question: How do you financially support journalism online?
Might be worth keeping an eye on if you’re interested in business models for journalism.
Paul Bradshaw‘s hosting the carnival this time round with posts so far logged by:
Some argue the geographic territory covered by most regional newspapers and TV stations is too small to develop the audience size necessary while others argue that newspapers are uniquely positioned to have the feet-on-the-street forces necessary to get local advertising… As we are developing these new media forces, what will be new rules of thumb for online journalism?
In talking to a colleague yesterday, my off-the-cuff guess at how many people could be supported by an online-only version of the Rocky Mountain News is five journalists. Nearly 250 could lose their jobs if the newspaper closes. An announcement about its fate could come as early as today. Where did I come up with five? I just made it up, of course. It could be 10, 15, or more, but definitely not 250.
Well, lets get my obvious bias out of the way. As the founder of Spot.Us – I think the idea of “community funded reporting” has a lot of merit and I’ll go into more detail why in this post. I do want to preface it by saying: it is not the only model out there. This is not the “key” to journalism’s financial woes – but I have yet to be discouraged and convinced to turn around and give up.
The gift economy in America is $300 billion of which 75 percent ($225 billion) comes from individual donors. So while Spot.Us had a great first month raising almost $5,000 – I don’t believe we’ve even scratched the surface. More importantly, Spot.Us is one representation of an idea — “community funded reporting” — which should be MUCH bigger than our small nonprofit.
[Newspapers should] look past the traditional “new” media and towards innovative thinking. Give readers interactive Flash presentations, copies of public documents, and widgets that inform and connect them to other users. Offer up an interactive “newspaper” where readers can flip the pages. Give local musicians a network where they can upload footage from live performances and a calendar of events everyone can add to.
Above all, become the ultimate guide to your coverage area. If that means creating portal sites to specific neighborhoods or paring down your coverage to one city instead of ten, that’s what you should do… If I want to find a hotel, a newspaper website should pop up. If I want to go see a show, a newspaper website should come up. If I want to know whether or not roads are going to be blocked because of a football game, a newspaper website should come up.
In order to survive, I really believe newspapers need to become the portals everyone uses to view the world.
And here are some of the comments made on Paul’s blog OJB so far:
# Jason_Cobb
No established model can work. Which is the beauty of it all. Time to start again at grass roots with info as base, not profit
# nmcintosh
Advertising. Subscription. Not charity. Revenue’s not the problem :)
# Paul0Evans1
Recognise that it’s not *that* expensive to publicly subsidise & the mood on this stuff is changing http://tinyurl.com/8yymcs
All Evolving Newsroom
Notes on online business models
The Carnival of Journalism, a group of journalism bloggers who collectively tackle a particular topic each month, have convened to discuss this question: How do you financially support journalism online?
Might be worth keeping an eye on if you’re interested in business models for journalism.
Paul Bradshaw‘s hosting the carnival this time round with posts so far logged by:
Jack Lail
David Cohn
Wendy Withers
And here are some of the comments made on Paul’s blog OJB so far:
# Jason_Cobb
No established model can work. Which is the beauty of it all. Time to start again at grass roots with info as base, not profit
# nmcintosh
Advertising. Subscription. Not charity. Revenue’s not the problem :)
# Paul0Evans1
Recognise that it’s not *that* expensive to publicly subsidise & the mood on this stuff is changing http://tinyurl.com/8yymcs
# BostinBloke
advertising….premium subsciption service…membership discounts
# matthewbennett
Subscribe to an individual journalist: top quality individual journalist blogs with premium content section
# benkunz
Business model for journalism: Turn 1 major city paper in each U.S. region into a nonprofit. Done.