New company aims to show news media how to make quality journalism pay online

PaidContent has a story about a new company which aims to develop ways that the news media can charge for content online.
It reports that entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher Gordon Crovitz and ex cable tv executive Leo Hindery have founded Journalism Online to provide news publishers with content-based e-commerce and other revenue-generating solutions.
“We have formed Journalism Online because we think this is a special moment in time when there is an urgent need for a business model that allows quality journalism to be the beneficiary of the Internet’s efficient delivery mechanism rather than its victim,” Brill says in a press release. “We believe we have developed a strategy and a set of services that will establish that model by restoring a stream of circulation revenue to supplement advertising revenue, while taking advantage of the savings to be gained from producing and delivering content electronically.”
Editor & Publisher is carrying an Associated Press story which reports:"Journalism Online's business model will share some elements with the cable and satellite TV packages that have become staples in millions of households. The company plans to offer an "all-you-can-read" option that would give customers access to the content of all the participating publishers for a monthly fee, expected to range from $15 to $20. The publishers will divvy up the revenue, based on which articles draw the most readership each month. Readers also will able to buy a pass for one-day access to the content kept behind the so-called pay wall."
Journalism Online aims to offer products to publishers as well as work with them on strategy and hopes to work with newspapers, magazine and online only publishers—anyone looking for a way to make money from news online. Journalism Online has posted a press release.
Some bloggers are already giving Journalism Online a kicking. Mark Potts on his Recovering Journalist blog writes: "the dinosaur's dream: a mechanism that will allow newspaper sites to hide their online content behind paid subscription walls. . . . I think the whole online subscription idea is harebrained and doomed to failure. . . Getting newspapers to agree to work together on anything is well-nigh impossible."
Story via journalism.co.uk

Can redundant journalists create the new business model which will save local news?

That is the intriguing question being asked by paidContent:UK editor Robert Andrews who writes:"The local news business may have laid off 500 in three months, but maybe some of those out-of-work reporters will help define the new business mode that’s so badly needed."
He looks at Everything Epping Forest, started by ex-editor David Jackman and WhiteHaven.org.uk, started by ex-news editor Dave Siddall as well as local news sites set-up in the US.
Robert Andrews adds:"The proprietors that saw their staff walk out the door should note their ex staffers’ new enterprises and could yet be best served by bringing them in to the fold through content syndication relationships. It’s a third-way model for local news."
Robert's post reminded me of those enterprising journalists like Paul Morgan, Tony Boullemier, Frank Branston and Lionel Pickering who started the free newspaper revolution in the 1980s. They ended up selling out to the established publishers for millions and became millionaires. It can be done.

Patrick Smith's Best of 2008

Patrick Smith of paidContent picks his best of 2008.

Best old/trad media of the year: An obvious choice perhaps: The Economist. It's a rare print success and required reading, in print, for thousands around the world plus it's been really influential on all kinds of news media. I'm also a huge fan of Fighting Talk on Five Live on Saturday mornings, a very silly knock-about sports gameshow made by real journalists without any of the usual BBC stiff-upper-lip approach to radio. Richard Edwards at the Yorkshire Evening Post deserves a mention for making good use of his local knowledge in the Karen Matthews case with some great reporting.

Best new media: paidContent! But aside from that the BBC's iPlayer has been a real success story and is changing the way we watch telly. The technology now looks like it'll be made available to commercial media too.

Best story of the year: I know a lot of Brits were turned off by it, but it was definitely Obama for me. I'm going for optimism over The Crunch, which is hardly over as a story, but Robert Peston must be the journo of the year for his long list of scoops, Northern Rock's bail-out being just one of them.

Prediction for 2009: I hate to be downbeat, but for newspapers, it's going to be a hard year: more redundancies, more closures, more consolidation. On the upside, there is a lot of opportunity for journalists to think like entrepreneurs and start their own businesses.

Tomorrow: Ruth Addicott, ex-editor of the Woman section on The Argus, Brighton, gives a seagull's eye view of the best of the media from the south coast.

Rest of the Best of, so far: Paul Linford, Adrian Monck , Grey Cardigan , Jean Morgan, Steve Busfield, Neil Fowler, Ian Reeves, Dominic Ponsford, Michael Crozier, Judith Townend and Laura Oliver.