• Home
  • About
    • diacritical
    • Douglas McLennan
    • Contact
  • Other AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

diacritical

Douglas McLennan's blog

Of Rocket Science And Making Money On Journalism

June 3, 2009 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Further to yesterday’s post on how newspapers ought to expand their definition of news to make money comes this post by Steve Outing, suggesting such a strategy:

The way for newspapers to charge for content is not rocket science.
They must create new types of high-value, probably niche, content,
communities, and/or services that are unique enough that people will be
willing to pay for them. That’s tricky when your newspaper has laid off
a big chunk of its editorial staff. But if it’s shedded stuff that
others do better on the web — no more local movie critic, TV editor,
books editor, etc. — then perhaps there can be room to rethink what a
“newspaper” is about and start creating new content and services that
break out of the newspaper box.

Newspapers have already lost many of the things they used to do to
national web players that do a better job and can serve local
audiences. The discussion now should be on what new things a newsroom
full of journalists can do that are outside what we’ve known and
valuable enough to get people to pull out their credit cards.

Last week executives from major newspaper chains met secretly (yeah, right) in Chicago to discuss putting their content behind pay walls, taking care of course to not collude on price fixing (of course). So apparently by the end of the year several chains will ask us to pay to read their product. There have been many critiques of this idea (Scott Rosenberg has a great roundup here). Outing also makes a great observation about the faultiness of the conceptual thinking behind pay-per-view:

In an era when people expect news to reach them in many ways, in many
formats, and on many devices, it’s anachronistic to return to
publishing news on one medium primarily and handicapping distribution
on digital media forms, like the web, where different rules apply.

Share:

  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email

Related

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

Subscribe to Diacritical by Email

Receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 3,851 other subscribers
Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on E-mail

Archives

Recent Comments

  • David E. Myers on How Should we Measure Art?: “A sophisticated approach to “measuring” incorporates all of the above, with clear delineation of how each plays a part if…” Nov 3, 16:20
  • Tom Corddry on How Should we Measure Art?: “Reading this brought to mind John Cage’s delineation of different ways to experience a Beethoven symphony–live in concert, on a…” Nov 3, 01:58
  • Abdul Rehman on A Framework for Thinking about Disruption of the Arts by AI: “This article brilliantly explores how AI is set to revolutionize everything, much like the digital revolution did. AI tools can…” Jun 8, 03:49
  • Richard Voorhaar on Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part): “I think we’ve lost several generations. My parents generation was the last that really supported, and knre something about classical…” May 15, 12:08
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Language, yes; really characterization. Investments and margins don’t become subsidies and taxes whether or not markets “are working” – I’m…” Mar 8, 07:13
  • Douglas McLennan on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “So what you’re arguing is language? – that investments aren’t subsidies and margins aren’t taxes? Sure, when markets are working.…” Mar 7, 21:42
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Doug: You can, if you like, buy a jailbroken Android, install GrapheneOS, and sideload apps from the open-source ecosystem at…” Mar 7, 16:17
  • Douglas McLennan on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Franklin: Thanks for the response, But a few points: My Chinese solar panel example was to make the point that…” Mar 7, 12:46
  • Steven Lavine on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “Terrific essay, with no prospect to a different future” Mar 7, 09:53
  • Franklin on How Subsidy for Big Tech Wrecked the Arts (and Journalism): “The economics of this essay are incoherent. The CCP was creating yuan ex nihilo and flooding it into domestically produced…” Mar 7, 08:49

Top Posts

  • Is The Institutionalization Of Our Arts A Dead End?
  • We Asked: What's the Biggest Challenge Facing the Arts?
  • Creativity Versus Skills
  • The UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World
  • A Framework for Thinking about Disruption of the Arts by AI

Recent Posts

  • Creativity Versus Skills January 12, 2025
  • How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art January 7, 2025
  • How Should we Measure Art? November 3, 2024
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part) May 13, 2024
  • When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem May 6, 2024
June 2009
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« May   Jul »

An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Creativity Versus Skills
  • How Digital AI Twins could Transform how We Make Art
  • How Should we Measure Art?
  • Classical Music has Lost a Generation. Blame the Metadata (in part)
  • When “Vacuum Cleaner for Babies” Beat Taylor Swift: Fixing the Music Streaming Problem

Copyright © 2025 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in