Yesterday’s #cfund debate on future business models for online news and journalism had plenty of ideas and voices in the mix.
Journalism.co.uk dipped in and out, but for those of you who want to read the whole thing there’s a Tweet stream and the CoverItLive version.
A handy round-up from participant Paul Balcerak, who writes on Wired Journalists about his key points in the debate:
- ‘Let the market handle it’ = do nothing
- Sponsorship for distribution e.g. people who care about journalism should invest in profitable industries outside of journalism and reinvest the profits in news
- Someone needs to try something
Other interesting titbits:
- A whopping 85 per cent against paying for news on a poll during the debate
- Create an online/offline community around a news brand and that community will pay for news online (well it used to work for paid-for newspapers didn’t it?)
- Micropayments have potential if they are used without building a wall around newspapers (from @NewspaperWorld)
Any other participants from the debate are welcome to leave comments/links to their blog posts on the debate.
Thanks for the shout, Laura.
Have to throw in my two cents, re: “A whopping 85 per cent against paying for news on a poll during the debate.” I know the Isaacson piece in Time stirred up the whole mircopayments debate again (at least over here), but I think it’s crazy that we’d want to charge for news at all. Aren’t we journalists the “Fourth Estate”? Why would we want to do anything to inhibit the flow of information? We’ve got this beautiful series of tubes that delivers news at the speed of light for free and we’re talking about how to slow it down.
Let’s face the facts: We all knew it was all work and no pay when we got into this business, so instead of trying to turn back the clock, let’s start looking toward a completely new model — like developing outside products to prop up news brands.
Interesting article. I would like to add that while all of us journalists and bloggers are discusiing news business and its future for a while now, there are only a few people doing anything about it. But I guess I am digressing here.
On a related note, we have been working on a comprehensive guide for online journalists at Bighow. As a part, we have put up a list of 14 news business models.
Hope that is useful for your readers.
http://bighow.com/poll/Which-among-these-is-the-best-news-business-model-