Feeble Attempts at Survival or a New Business Model for Newspapers?
by: Gene De Libero | September 14, 2009 | 1 Comment
Check out the post at Reflections of a Newsosaur today. They’ve had a peek at a new American Press Institute study and share some of the more salient points in the post.
It’s going to be interesting to see who does what as far as charging for content. Google’s micropayment system (via Google Checkout) that will allow publishers to charge for pieces of content might help on the execution side, but they’ll need a serious content marketing strategy.
Speaking for myself, there are so many ways for me to get content from many different places, I’m not sure I’d have the impetus to whip out my credit card all that often. Granted, there may be times when I just have to have something, but I think those occasions will be few and far between.
Is this an industry gasping for its last few breaths? It’s going to be interesting to see how this long tail paid content approach plays out.
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September 19th, 2009 @ 8:21 am
I was involved in newspaper and magazine Interactive when we were first beginning to provide content for free. In our defense, we had NO IDEA that we were pushing a business model that had been around for hundreds of years past such an important tipping point. Unless we can figure out how to make micro payments work, or develop wholly new and more engaging modes of advertising [see Kwei comments at end of his Spotlight], I’m just not sure there are any other options.
BUT THAT IS ONLY HALF THE STORY. The other half — which I rarely hear anyone discussing — is that these professional newsgathering organizations are the ones generating all of the underlying content [call it 'primary source content'?] that the social media is glomming on to. I recognize the value of the social media content itself, especially for the fringier activities I engage in personally for which there is little or no mainstream media, but without that ‘primary source content’ to wrap around, what holds it all together?
It’s like rain. Water vapor hangs out in the clouds, thrilled to be floating around in the sky. And it’ll float up there, forever. It’s not until a little speck of carbon, called condensation nuclei and usually made up of dust or smog or whatever, enters the scene that the vapor can gang-together enough to form a drop that falls from the sky.
I fear that without the ‘primary source content’ to form as condensation nuclei in Interactive media, we’ll lose the ability to form the raindrops that really make the system work.
Get ready for a long dry spell.