Wednesday 15 April 2009

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

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