News for Digital Journalists
Posts tagged with: Business Models
May 03, 2010
On April 29, the Associated Press announced several new digital news initiatives—including that its controversial News Registry system will launch July 14.
When AP first announced its News Registry plan last July, it attracted ample concern, skepticism, and scorn…
Critics complained that AP’s plan was heavy handed, confusing, and technically misguided. Supporters said the Registry would simply be good business, and they noted AP’s claims that the Registry is not intended to block fair use. (See this July 2009 CJR post, and read the comments, to get a range of views on the fair use issue.)
The strong backlash was fueled by AP CEO Tom Curley’s July 2009 statement to The New York Times that the Registry would catch and regulate AP content use as minor as a headline and a link to an article: “If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that.”
AP says that “200 member newspapers have become part of the Registry’s beta test. That number is expected to reach 600 by the Registry’s July 14 production launch, when the platform will be opened to additional members and publishers.”
Also, the US Justice Dept. recently decided that the News Registry does not pose antitrust problems.
AP’s latest announcement includes no details of how the News Registry will function. However, last August Poynter’s Megan Taylor offered a good roundup of how AP’s News Registry is supposed to work. It’s based on microformat technology—a powerful semantic web tool that can aid discovery of relevant content, but that is also technologically simple to subvert.
AP is promoting the News Registry as a way for member papers to increase paid online distribution of their content. In the AP release, Curley is quoted as saying, “Every content creator who uses the Registry will be able to set the rights for the use of that content, so that it can be copied legally or used in new products that the industry or others create with proper permission and compensation.”
It’ll be interesting to see what rights the Registry allows for excerpting AP headlines or other content—and whether participating publishers will be free to specify usage rights for their content that are less restrictive than AP’s defaults.
By Amy Gahran, 05/03/10 at 2:42 pm
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July 06, 2010
If you’re trying to wrap your head around the transformation of the media industry, a good place to start might be the idea of “perestroika”—the old Soviet term that described the dramatic restructuring of its most mature institutions. That, in fact, is the theme for an industry gathering in Philadelphia later this month that explores the transformation of computing, communications, business, and society in the Network Age, while asking the question: After everything is connected, “what’s next?”
The July 29-30 Supernova forum, co-hosted by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, is produced by Kevin Werbach, a former FCC technology official and organizer of the PC Forum with Esther Dyson. Technologists, entrepreneurs, business executives, investors, and policymakers will come together to discuss three overarching themes.—evolving digital infrastructure and platforms, models for networked business innovation, and transforming or replacing established institutions.
Tech policy forum participants include White House official Beth Noveck, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen, Google’s Washington counsel Richard Whitt and BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis. And other participants will also lead discussion at afternoon unconferences and “challenge sessions.”
Check out the agenda and register here.
If, on the other hand, you’re just trying to figure out the restructuring of your own newsroom, the gathering for you might be the International Newsroom Summit in London, Sept. 8-9.
Speakers and attendees include many European newspaper publishers, but Editor & Publisher reports The New York Time’s Arthur Sulzberger Jr., will be on the program, along with top Washington Post newsroom exec Raju Narisetti.
The key question: what does the new generation newsroom look like, and how does it operate? Discussions are around topics like newsroom synergies, smartphone publishing, innovative storytelling and paid content. Register here.
By A. Adam Glenn, 07/06/10 at 11:54 am
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July 27, 2010
Amid debate about news paywalls, a bit of not-so-good news for those hoping to get consumers to pony up. A new study shows that despite the enormous popularity of Internet services like Twitter, no one seems actually willing to pay for them.
The annual Digital Future report just out from USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism found, for instance, that while 49 percent of Internet users use free microblogging tools like Twitter, not one of those surveyed said they’d be willing to pay for them.
Jeffrey Cole, director of the school’s Center for the Digital Future, which has been conducting the study since 2000, noted that “Twitter has no plans to charge its users, but this result illustrates, beyond any doubt, the tremendous problem of transforming free users into paying users.”
And it’s not like users see online advertising as a good alternative for funding the media they use. The study found half never click on web advertising, and 70 percent found it “annoying.” In the end, though, 55 percent would rather see online advertising than pay for content. Added Cole: “Consumers really want free content without advertising, but ultimately they understand that content has to be paid for - one way or another.”
The study also showed ever-greater use of online services paired with a continued decline in use of print newspapers, along with a rising perception that online information is unreliable. See highlights of the report (PDF).
By A. Adam Glenn, 07/27/10 at 7:53 am
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July 30, 2010
What’s the key to survival for nontraditional news startups? Diversity - at least in terms of varied revenue streams and ways to create journalistic and community value.
That’s one core precept identified this spring at a roundtable of a dozen innovative news startups and now detailed in a new report, “Seeking Sustainability: A Nonprofit News Roundtable.” The nonprofit startups included California Watch, The Huffington Post Investigative Fund, Chicago News Cooperative, Voice of San Diego, The Texas Tribune and others. They were brought together in April by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Among other central lessons the startups shared:
* Leadership, business model and visibility were more important to developing successful community and media partnerships than was initial financial backing.
* Traditional media partners, particularly public media, can be very helpful for distributing content and providing organizational and financial support.
* Memberships can be an effective source of revenue - incentives and benefits may be a further boost.
* Existing technology is a better bet than custom tools, especially for startups with limited tech staffing and budget.
For more on the report, visit a July 27 post in KnightBlog, or go directly to the pdf of the 82-page report, which also includes nearly a dozen videos from the roundtable discussion.
By A. Adam Glenn, 07/30/10 at 7:10 am
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August 03, 2010
Do you think objectivity is crucial to journalism? Or is transparency the new objectivity? The journalism crowdfunding service Spot.us has launched another sponsored survey exploring ideas and attitudes about objectivity in journalism.
Currently, Clay Shirky (author of Cognitive Surplus and other books about the net) is sponsoring this survey. Questions include: “Is objectivity in journalism even possible?” And: “Is striving for objectivity in journalism a good thing?”...
In these Spot.us surveys, an organization or brand donates $5 to a story pitch designated by each Spot.us user who takes a 1-minute survey.
To take this survey, select an open Spot.us story pitch you’d like to fund. Then click “Earn Credits” at the top of the right-hand sidebar. You’ll be asked to register or log in to Spot.us, and then you can take the survey.
According to Spot.us founder David Cohn, “Shirky was given the opportunity to direct funds from a foundation to the nonprofit of his choice. We are truly humbled that he chose Spot.Us. The answers to this survey will be made public but anonymous.”
These sponsored surveys (which Cohn calls community-focused sponsorships) are a unique business-model experiment to help organizations connect with the public about issues—while financially supporting journalism—in a way that’s quite different from traditional advertising or marketing.
Cohn will be developing this model further in his upcoming Reynolds Journalism Institute fellowship. This concept also was deemed a “notable entry” in this year’s Knight-Batten awards.
ALSO: Spot.us goes national. In his July 27 PBS Mediashift post, Cohn explained the site’s recent shift from a regional to a national focus.
“It makes little sense for me to tell a good pitch from Illinois or Texas that they can’t put their pitch up until we find a handful of other pitches in their region,” wrote Cohn. “So, as of last week, the subdomains at Spot.Us have been removed. Trying to convince people in a specific region to use the site—while stopping others from using it because they aren’t in the right region—is not the best use of our time or energy.”
Spot.us was launched with a 2008 Knight News Challenge grant.
By Amy Gahran, 08/03/10 at 10:07 am
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August 04, 2010
It’s been a little over a year since the nonprofit news startup Investigate West launched, and in that time it’s made significant progress—as well as some significant changes .
Here are some of this venture’s highlights so far…
I-West’s executive editor and co-founder Rita Hibbard is an alum of KDMC@USC’s first news entrepreneurship bootcamp in 2009, and this year she’s a fellow with KDMC@USC’s Leadership Institute. (Both of these programs are funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.) On YouTube, she offered her vision and advice for launching a nonprofit news site.
According to Columbia Journalism Review, I-West’s core staff worked for “sweat equity” from July 2009 until June 2010, when they began paying themselves.
When the site launched, blogging was a key vehicle for its content. But over the past year, the staff is blogging less and focusing more on big features.
So far I-West has published three major investigative features, with paid distribution through regional and national news organizations (print and broadcast).
I-West’s annual budget is about $225,000 (80% from foundations, 20% from paid content and individual donors). CJR noted that this is “a far cry from the $1.35 million budget the team projected when it launched a year ago. Hibbard explained that that forecast was based the expectation of hiring a larger staff, which no longer seems practical.”
Aside from producing traditional journalistic stories, I-West staff is writing at least one white paper, paid for by a Russell Family Foundation grant. Is this a conflict of interest? I-West cofounder Robert McClure told CJR: “We’re providing [the foundation] with information that will back up a reporting project we want to do (storm water in Puget Sound). So why not go ahead and do it? It’s their information once we give it to them, but we learned something. You can’t unring a bell.”
McClure clarified that I-West intends to undertake only paid private research projects that support I-West’s journalistic plans.
In year two, I-West intends to produce 6-8 major investigative features—and perhaps hire one more full-time staff reporter.
By Amy Gahran, 08/04/10 at 11:57 am
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