Emh579’s Blog

News organizations – big, small, traditional, and new – are using and testing different models to try and achieve the same goal: to reach as large an audience as possible. Let’s face it… our original models are becoming outdated. You might be thinking – which models would be wise of me to employ, and which would be as waste of time to even consider? Your first two questions should be: do I want to keep a print version of my paper? And what will be most valuable to my audience? When you make that decision, keep Paul Graham’s words in mind, “When you see something that’s taking advantage of new technology to give people something they want that they couldn’t have before, you’re probably looking at a winner. And when you see something that’s merely reacting to new technology in an attempt to preserve some existing source of revenue, you’re probably looking at a loser.” This report will begin with addressing proposed and used models, and I will give my advice about these models. Finally, I will sum up with what I believe to be an overall sound model.

A. Be an expert. Most business models that have been discussed involve generating revenue from the consumers, i.e. subscriptions, donations, restrictive and less restrictive pay walls, and meter. For starters, although some new news organizations have been successful with endowments and donations, I do not advise these models especially for established organizations. They are risky, and there exists little tangible incentive for people to give money. Moving on… a key point is that in order to be successful with charging for your online content, you must exploit your comparative advantage. Because people are accustomed to getting news online for free, you have to find a specialty… something your audience can get accurately and in depth, only from you. I cannot stress this enough. For example, the Wall Street Journal charges a $100 to $140 a year subscription for their business and financial news but permits consumers to read their culture, general-interest and politics free of charge. The WSJ can charge for some of their content because it is a trusted expert an resource on the financial industry.

B. Ads are annoying. A different business model finds a balance between generating revenue from consumers and advertisers. Matthew Sollars in his Paid Content, E-Commerce and Turning the Knobs Down on Ads blog post talks about the Journalism Online e-commerce model. Basically, there are different tiers of subscriptions. The more a subscriber pays, the less advertisements they see. The model also has an element that I consider product placement for online content. For example, if an article is a book review, the article can provide a link to purchase the book. Consumers dislike ads, and this alleviates the annoyance. Either they can pay a premium to replace the ad space with clean space, or the ads are subtly embedded in an article…. or both!

C. Less is more. Referring to the new news organization, Jeff Jarvis said in his NewBizNews  in the Guardian post , “with a staff of 100 instead of 1,000 – and without the cost of printing and distribution – it is much smaller than the old newspaper and that is what makes it profitable.” Good journalism can still be produced with far fewer people. Think VoiceofSanDiego.org (11 employees), and NewHavenIndependent.org (13 staff members.)

D. Be human. Humans naturally like to interact with other people… we are social creatures. One of the biggest goals of a news organization should be to engage readers by whatever means is necessary. Polls, comment sections, etc. The more a reader feels involved, the greater the loyalty they will have to your site. Tying this all back to section A, the greater relationship you build with a reader, the more trusted you will be. If your business model changes, if you begin to charge for access to some or all of your content, that reader will be more inclined to find value in the cost. Fortunately, “traditional media has a reputation — in most cases — for accuracy, for independence …and for trust,” says Mathew Ingram in his TEDx Toronto: New Media vs. Old Media blog post. These are goals that should be preserved. One last piece of advice: don’t be afraid to admit your paper’s mistakes. We’re only human. As Ingram says, “Journalists like to think that we have an exclusive on the truth, that only we can possibly find all the important information. That was never really true, and now readers have ways of telling us it isn’t true.”

Finally, I am going to sum this up with the some ideas I plan to use with my start-up news site venture. I will describe the key ways I plan to attain, retain and gain and audience. Maybe you can take some bits and pieces of this and apply it to your new-and-improved organization.

In order to be a trusted expert, I am going to show the face behind my website through video blogs and news packages. My site will have a goal that every member is striving to achieve; therefore I will build a community. This community will have a variety of way to communicate through my site. Not only will I form a relationship with the members, but also they will form relationships with each other because we will all share a common goal. My audience will be one city to begin with, and eventually my site will have branches for other cities. We will create a network of communities all striving to achieve one goal, but technically only one city can win. Therefore I’ll create a healthy competition. As I mentioned before that my site will have “members,” but membership will be free. I’ll probably run my business off of advertisements (mostly unobtrusive) at least in the beginning. And my staff will be very small. If you are totally confused, that’s a problem. If you like where my thinking is going, try to see how this can help you out… and be on the look out for my site!

The YouTube video below provides a good, short  overview of the future of journalism according to Jeff Jarvis.