Think of this as Volume 11, Number 30 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.
We're on the verge of a breakthrough in journalism. A breakthrough in business models.
Publishers like ZDNet, where I now work, have found some success with incentive programs based on pageviews. They have good online publishing systems and ad staffs which can fill the corners of an online page with money-producing ads. By putting the two together, everyone can make a living.
Critics will note it can be tweaked a bit. I get a lot more traffic from trollbait than from innovative, interview-driven stuff, so when I'm hungry I go with the trollbait. Over time readers will notice, and it's up to the publisher to tweak their financial incentives to keep me on the straight-and-narrow.
If we could simply take this model into local news markets, we'd have enough money to pay for covering all those events and scandals which right now aren't being covered. The zoning games played with developers. The small corruptions of the local school boards. The side deals done to lure businesses to town. An open meeting is closed if there's no one there taking notes.
In his print column for July 28 Jonathan Alter of Newsweek (left) weeps bitter tears over this. "Bloggers rarely pick up the phone or go interview the middle-level bureaucrats who know the good stuff," he writes.
I know why. It doesn't pay.
This has always been true. You know how much of a print newspaper's budget goes to editorial? (This is also true for journals like Newsweek, by the way.)
8%!
That's all the writers, all the editors, the whole art department, the secretaries, the research people, everything. Over 90% of a newspaper's income goes elsewhere -- to the ad staff, to the printer, to the delivery guys, to the executive suite, to the bottom line. That's all you're really worth, Alter -- a little piece of that 8%.
So there is plenty of room to create incentives for news-gathering. Advertising isn't disappearing. It's simply changing media -- from print to online. And newspapers simply aren't competing for that dollar. Because of attitudes like Alter's, which are divorced from the market.
The problem is this assumption of "authority" which positively oozes out of Alter's pores, and those of every other so-called journalist in this country. That's something your employer earns for you, and you try very hard not to toss away. It's a loan, not a grant, which comes from the market, not from God.
So here's the secret to making money online, doing real journalism, in 2008.
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