How To Make Money From News

Four new business models for journalism have been presented by a research team in the US.

The group from the City University of New York put together the proposals after conducting interviews with industry insiders, studying media data, and carrying out a survey of hyperlocal websites.

Visitors to the New Business Models for News site can examine these in depth as they are presented in the form of a spreadsheet detailing costs and projected revenue.



The team was tasked with providing business models for a sustainable form of journalism for a city without a notable news offering in print.

Here are the four business model proposals:

1 & 2

Hyperlocal & Ecosystem Framework Models

“Incorporates two models: hyperlocal and the sales, support, and technology framework that we believe is necessary to optimize businesses in the ecosystem.”

3

New News Organisation

“This model envisions a new, metro-wide news organisation ... that operates on a smaller scale and performs a wide variety of tasks.

“It will produce original unique beat and investigative reporting and it will also work collaboratively with the other members of the ecosystem and its readers to add value.

“Advertising will remain the key business driver, but to maximise profits the new organisation will diversify its revenues.”

4

Not-for-Profit News Organisation

“We want to show the level of resources that might be available in a given market to augment local news gathering efforts.

“Researching the available charitable money in a market, we picked a hypothetical bottom line of $3 million and built one possible organisation to augment journalism in the market.”

Have Your Say

Each spreadsheet can be downloaded by users who can then alter figures such as staff numbers etc and add their own ideas.

See Paul Bradshaw’s Online Journalism Blog for his thoughts on the viability of the proposals.

Debating Journalism’s Big Questions

An online resource now holds over 90 interviews and op-eds discussing the future of news in the digital age.

The Future of Journalism project is featured on the OurBlook website, which proclaims to be a cross between a blog and a book.

It is a collaborative resource which has dozens of interviews with industry experts sharing their thoughts on some of the biggest challenges facing journalism.

The site also has opinion pieces from journalists and academics pondering subjects such as citizen journalism and business models of the future.

Writing on the Online Journalism Review, OurBlook staffer Sandra Ordonez says: “The website is a collaborative, Web 2.0 platform created for the exchange of research, information and dialogue on national and global issues.”

She adds that the interviews and pieces have been compiled into an online book and can be viewed on OurBlook’s Future of Journalism pages.

Journalists Launch InvestigateWest

A group of journalists has gone it alone and set up a website dedicated to investigative journalism.

The team behind the nonprofit InvestigateWest previously worked at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which went online-only in March this year.

Now they are calling the shots at their own news organisation, which is focusing on issues affecting healthcare, social justice and the environment in the western US and Canada.

According to the press release announcing the launch, InvestigateWest will distribute its text, video and online content via a syndicate service and through partnership deals with other media groups.

“InvestigateWest is a new model of public service journalism that seeks to fill the void rapidly developing in investigative coverage,” said Rita Hibbard, executive director and editor.

“Our goal is to produce journalism that empowers citizens and changes institutions. We will measure our success by the impact of our stories.”

InvestigateWest is funded by a mix of individual donations, contributions from companies and a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

The nonprofit group is also a founding member of the new Investigative News Network, which partners together more than 20 groups dedicated to investigative journalism.

Huff Post Launches Investigative Fund

A new investigative journalism project funded by the Huffington Post and the Atlantic Philanthropies is about to be launched.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund will use its £1.2m starting budget to pay a team of ten reporters and freelancers to get digging and produce a range of in-depth investigative reports concerning the American economy.

HuffPost founder Ariana Huffington says the project has been created in response to fears that industry cutbacks will affect the quality and quantity of investigative journalism

Writing on the HuffPost, she continues: “All who recognise the indispensable role good journalism plays in our democracy are looking for ways to preserve it during this transitional period for the media.

“For too long, whether it’s coverage of the war in Iraq or the economic meltdown, we’ve had too many autopsies and not enough biopsies.

“The HuffFund is our attempt to change this. It will also provide new opportunities for seasoned journalists who have been laid off or forced into early retirement.”

Huffington also announced that the resulting reports would be published on the HuffPost and would also be made freely available to any other publishers.

Among the partners working with the HuffPost on this project are the Columbia School of Journalism and Jay Rosen from New York University.

More about the fund can be found on Rosen’s Press Think blog and on guardian.co.uk.