Call for local bloggers for a NewBizNews event
Posted on 15. Oct, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
I’m putting out a call for local bloggers within traveling distance from New York – and for journalists who’ve left their jobs or are thinking about leaving to start local news blogs – to attend a series of workshops at CUNY on Nov. 11.
The first half of the day, we’ll be presenting and discussing the New Business Models for News Project projections for the local news ecosystem (earlier presented at a Knight Foundation-sponsored event at the Aspen Institute). In the second half of the day, we will have workshops and discussions aimed at improving local sites’ businesses: setting up; serving ads; selling ads; marketing; managing communities; and more – plus presentations by companies working to help these sites, including Outside.in Growthspur, Prism, Google, Addify, PaperG, Spot.us, and others. We will have a mix of bloggers, editors, publishers, entrepreneurs, investors, and companies working in the new local news ecosystem. Gannett New Jersey and The New York Times are contributing to the effort.
Space is limited so right now we’re just putting out the call for bloggers and journalists who have or plan to have local sites to give them priority. A preemptive apology to those for whom we don’t have room; we’ll do our best to accommodate everyone we can. Know also that we’ll be streaming the day. If you’d like an invite, please email David Cohn ([email protected]), who’s kind enough to help organize this, our third CUNY conference on the topic, and who’s a helluva lot better organized than I am. Please make sure to give us a link to your site.
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NewBizNews on All Things Considered
Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik came to CUNY to report on the effort to find new business models for news, including our Knight Foundation funded presentation at the Aspen Institute:
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The model of the new media model
Posted on 03. Oct, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
Leo Laporte, creator of This Week in Tech and the TWiT network of podcasts, spoke before the Online News Association this week and presented the very model of the new media company: small, highly targeted, serving a highly engaged public, and profitable. (Full disclosure: I am a panelist on TWiT’s This Week in Google show.)
Laporte said he charges $70 CPMs for ads. Some questioned the $12 CPM we included in our New Business Models for News, though we went with a conservative middle-ground based on the experience of existing local businesses. If we had – as we will – instead forecast a new kind of local news business – highly targeted with a highly engaged public, like TWiT’s – the CPMs and bottom lines would have been exponentially higher. The companies are still small but they are profitable. Laporte said he has costs of $350,000 a year with seven employees now but revenue of $1.5 million and that revenue is doubling annually. It will increase more as he announces new means of distribution (to the TV; he believes that podcasting is too hard for the audience).
Rather than nickel-and-diming current business assumptions, we need to have the ambition of a Laporte and build the new and better media enterprise.
(The video is after this link; it unfortunately plays automatically, so we wanted to get it off the front page).
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Journalism as capitalism
Posted on 02. Oct, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
The only way that journalism is going to be sustainable is if it is profitable – and out of that market relationship comes many other benefits: accountability to the public it serves; independence from funders’ agendas; growth; innovation. This is the future for journalism we envisioned in the New Business Models for News Project.
Not-for-profit, publicly and charitably supported journalism has its place in the new ecosystem of news; that’s why we included it in our models at CUNY. I think it should fill in blanks the market doesn’t fill.
But I agree with Jack Shafer at least in part that there are dangers to relying too much on not-for-profit news. He does an admirable job listing those dangers, chief among them influence by funders and their motives. Texas Tribune funder and founder John Thornton responds here. I’ll stand halfway between them: We can use and perhaps need funded journalism but we also need to be aware of the risks and must expect transparency about them.
I see another danger, though: that not-for-profit ventures will delay or even choke off for-profit, sustainable entrepreneurship in news. I would prefer to see various of the many funders who gave funds to not-for-profit endeavors – note $5 million give to a new not-for-profit entity in the Bay area – instead had invested in for-profit companies that can build companies that support and sustain themselves rather than rely on hand-outs. That is God’s work.
Mind you, I’m not coming at this from the perspective – as some might – that journalism has to be produced only by paid professionals. I have argued that we would be wise to account for the value of volunteerism and that we must find ways to reduce the marginal cost of news and new journalism to near-zero.
But in terms of saving the functions reporters perform, I think we should find ways to support them and their work in profitable enterprises. So, in a rare moment, I disagree with Clay Shirky that we must rescue reporters as charities. This call continues the notion that journalism is in a crisis. No, its legacy owners are in a crisis because they could not and would not change; Clay’s right that their models and buildings are burning. But journalism is facing no end of opportunities (as the Knight Commission’s Ted Olson said at today’s Knight Foundation presentation of the group’s recommendations: never before in journalism has there been so much opportunity for innovation in journalism).
So let’s not save those reporters and let’s certainly not save doomed companies that refused to change. Let’s invest in the future, in creating new means of gathering and sharing a community’s news that are better than old methods and that are more efficient and thus more easily sustainable. That’s what we present in the New Business Models for News. When we presented at the Aspen Institute this summer, I pointed to a blog post I wrote (but can’t find now) a year and a half ago arguing that when the Washington Post bought out reporters, it should invest in them, setting them up with blogs and businesses and promoting and selling ads for them. That resonated. And that is one step toward a new model built on networks, profitable networks. There are many more that need building.
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Two Paid Models for Metro News
Posted on 30. Sep, 2009 by Matthew Sollars.
The debate over paid models has grown heated in recent months as publishers cast about for new revenues to replace declining advertising dollars. But, although asking readers to pay for the news seems to have gained favor of late, publishers are still divided on whether charging for online content is the best approach. Indeed, just 51% believe it will work.
In an effort to add to the paid-content discussion, we’ve built two versions of a paid model. The first is a “pure” paid content model where 100% of the main news site sits behind a pay wall. The other is a hybrid model that envisions keeping up to 80% of the content available for free. Both models have four scenarios with varying subscriber and fee levels (the hybrid model has additional variables for the level of free content, set at 50% and 80%). As with most of our models, Jeff Mignon and Nancy Wang at Mignon Media helped us build these paid versions and provided invaluable guidance and insight throughout.
Download the full paid version here and the hybrid here.
If you’ve taken a peek at any of the other models we produced and presented to the Aspen Institute you’ll see many of the revenue and expense components are repeated here. We’ve kept our staffing assumptions roughly the same and this news organization can take advantage of some of the same revenue opportunities (like events, coupons, and a range of services to local businesses) that are open to a free metro-wide publication.
Here are a few take-aways on the paid models:
– According to our assumptions, the main site of the fully paid model loses millions throughout the 3-year period.
– In three out of four scenarios, the main site in the hybrid model is profitable in year 3 (with the B-to-C and B-to-C services, it could be profitable in year 2).
– Profitability rises along with the level of free content.
To account for the impact of a paywall on advertising, we have made some notable adjustments from our New News Organization model:
– We’ve reduced the average sponsorship revenue assumption to $100 per week from $1500.
– We also reduced the commission the organization takes on ads sold into a metro-wide ad network to 2% from the 20% estimated in the free version.
I’m guessing that some folks will take issue with a few of those assumptions. As always, we hope you will tell us where exactly we’ve gotten it wrong. Plug your own numbers into light-blue cells on the “Paid Model Options” page and then send your spreadsheet back to us. If you prefer to work in Google Docs, the full paid model is here while the hybrid model is available here. (The New Business Models for News Project has been funded by the Knight Foundation.)
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NewBizNews on MPR
Posted on 28. Sep, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
I joined Alan Mutter on Minnesota Public Radio this morning talking about new business models for news. Mentions of the project and the discussion at the Knight-Foundation-funded Aspen Institute presentation. Have a listen:
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The X Prizes for news (and media)
Posted on 25. Sep, 2009 by Jeff Jarvis.
A conversation with our Knight Foundation friends at Aspen inspired me to think through what an X Prize for news could accomplish. Then this week’s report in the New York Times about the awarding of the NetFlix X Prize – and the far greater value it created, not just for NetFlix, but for its participants and others – inspired me to buckle down and open that conversation here (and at my blog).
I’m not asking idly. With the right structure, I’d seek funding to administer such a prize at CUNY and we can hope that smart companies, organizations, and patrons will see that an X Prize could be a way to innovate aggressively and openly. Or is it?
We must start with a question: W