{"id":110,"date":"2009-06-03T22:12:22","date_gmt":"2009-06-03T22:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp\/2009\/06\/of_rocket_science_and_making_m\/"},"modified":"2009-06-03T22:12:22","modified_gmt":"2009-06-03T22:12:22","slug":"of_rocket_science_and_making_m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/06\/of_rocket_science_and_making_m.html","title":{"rendered":"Of Rocket Science And Making Money On Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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

Newspapers have already lost many of the things they used to do to
\nnational web players that do a better job and can serve local
\naudiences. The discussion now should be on what new things a newsroom
\nfull of journalists can do that are outside what we’ve known and
\nvaluable enough to get people to pull out their credit cards.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> here). Outing also makes a great observation about the faultiness of the conceptual thinking behind pay-per-view: <\/p>\n

\n

In an era when people expect news to reach them in many ways, in many
\nformats, and on many devices, it’s anachronistic to return to
\npublishing news on one medium primarily and handicapping distribution
\non digital media forms, like the web, where different rules apply.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ePZm-1M","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":352,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/05\/movie_critics-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":0},"title":"Us Against “Them” (That Anti-Expert Thing Again)","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"May 11, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In the Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz has noted the carnage of movie critics at newspapers. He isn't weeping. Movie criticism has been a feature of American newspapers for a\u00a0century, and sadly, one can count the standout critics throughout that\u00a0time on maybe two hands. Many of these jobs were filled by\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/05\/movie_critics-2.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"siskelandebert.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/siskelandebert.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":86,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/04\/newspapers_-_is_the_print_stil.html","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":1},"title":"Newspapers – Is Print Readership Still Bigger Than Online?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"April 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Poynter's Martin Langeveld says our assumptions that the online audience for newspapers is much bigger than the print audience are flat out wrong. All generally accepted truths notwithstanding, more than 96 percent of newspaper reading is still done in the print editions, and the online share of the newspaper audience\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2007\/03\/the_great_newspaper_comments_d.html","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":2},"title":"The Great Newspaper Comments Debate","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"March 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Newspapers have long touted how responsive they are to readers. They want to hear from readers. They care what readers think. They try to give readers what they want. How then to interpret these debates over what to do with reader comments on news stories? News organizations realize that they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "main"","block_context":{"text":"main","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/category\/main"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":112,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/06\/is_yelp_replacing_arts_journal.html","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":3},"title":"Is Yelp Replacing Arts Journalists?","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"June 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Craigslist stole in and took the classified ad business away from newspapers while they weren't looking. The same thing seems to be happening to A&E reviews and listings with Yelp. Newspapers have been doing a worse and worse job of reviewing local performances. And most newspaper listings are not very\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/06\/is_yelp_replacing_arts_journal.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"yelp.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/yelp.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":346,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/03\/you_know_youre_in_trouble_when-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":4},"title":"You Know You're In Trouble When You're Just A Can Of Peas","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"March 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Interactivity has been redefined in the past few years. Newspapers used to think they were interactive because they ran letters to the editor. Rarely did they respond to the letters (unless those letters demanded a correction), but \"hearing from the readers\" became a mantra for the focus-group-driven news organization.Arts organizations\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"social-media-people.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/social-media-people.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":351,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/05\/if_is_was_just_about_the_money-2.html","url_meta":{"origin":110,"position":5},"title":"If It Was Just About The Money We'd All Be Making Porn","author":"Douglas McLennan","date":"May 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A movie studio exec once told me that if it were true that Hollywood was only interested in making money, the studios would have long ago ditched what they were doing and made porn. Huge money in porn, apparently. Who knew? Much as it's easy to dismiss the moguls for\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 12 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 12 comments","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/2009\/05\/if_is_was_just_about_the_money-2.html#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/diacritical\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}