Even a well funded news startup has big challenges. The Bay Area News Project, slated to launch in a few months, has $5 million in seed money, donated office space, paid student interns from Berkeley, a deal with the New York Times, and a CEO making $400,000 a year. An optimistic business plan predicts the Project will make $12 million in year 5.
Are you envious yet?
The LA Times reports why this startup with 15 employees faces a tough road if it tries to compete with the San Francisco Chronicle.
While traditional news media falters, Facebook has 400 million active users, and Twitter has a log of 10 billion tweets. Many news organizations like the NY Times, CNN.com, the AP and the BBC are hiring social media editors dedicated to communicating with readers and viewers. The American Journalism Review reports there are 51 social media editors across the country, based on a list provided by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Their main job is to monitor what people are talking about on different social networks, and spot the trends that may turn into news. They also engage with audiences to create a conversation around the news.
Atlantapost.com went public last week with online news for black professionals. According to a news release, the site features original and aggregated content on personal finance, business, media and politics. Moguldom Media has similar sites in New York, Washington and Chicago. Media Bistro details the demographics and the company’s other targeted ventures.
Will public funding, the public radio model be the savior for high quality, ethically sound journalism? Laura Walker, President and Chief Executive Officer of WNYC Public Radio, says, “I don’t think it is an easy model, I think it’s actually harder, and I think it gets underestimated.” To learn more, watch the Leonard Witt video interview with Walker and read the transcript below. The interview is part of the Center for Sustainable Journalism’s Future of Journalism series. Sign up for Future of Journalism alerts on the Center’s home page.
Walker: That’s a big question. I think we’re in a real period of dislocation and creative dislocation, and financial – the economic model. I’m not a pessimist, I believe that there’s going to be a lot of interesting journalism that will come out of this time. I think that the model of what a journalist is, is going to change from somebody who sits at their computer, and calls up their sources, and writes a report that is a one way report, to something that is a much more organic process that includes input from lots of people out there. I think in many ways it’s harder to retain the journalistic principals when you have so many sources and you have to check them all. But I think several newspapers, a lot of newspapers will survive, many will die. I just… I hope that there will be both the entrepreneurial ventures in the for-profit world, the non-profit entrepreneurial ventures, and some media organizations that are investing in journalism.
Witt: Now everyone talks about the public media models, so many of these new start-ups, you know, “Oh let’s do like public radio does, we can raise a lot of money.” Now maybe they can but what does that do… Is the pot big enough for them and for you, and is that a good idea?
Walker: I think that in some cases it can be very naive but I think we need to expand, too. I think frankly there are a handful of public radio stations that are out there and have …. Maybe not a handful probably 30 to 40 public radio stations that are doing good really solid journalism in their communities. In terms of the philanthropic model there’s money out there if we all do good stuff and I think it’s really frankly about vision. Somebody like Paul Bass in New Haven is, you know… yeah, he can do that because he has vision and he has a way he can raise money from foundations, and he’s nimble and he’s ambitious. So yeah, I think, I actually think that it also will raise the bar for all of us. And so I don’t think it is an easy model. I think it’s actually harder, and I think it gets underestimated. I think you have to have a board in the end that’s going to also help with fundraising. There are, I think, many major donors and some foundations that will fund this. As I said in the panel, I think the diversified revenue stream is critical, critical. For journalistic reasons as well.
Witt: I’m thinking they really have to go out to the people and give them some ownership, that’s my own feeling. In a place like Georgia right now you have WABE, which is owned by the school board. And then you have GPB, which is kind of owned by the state. This is not a good formula for high quality, ethically sound journalism and so how do we get around that? You do have independents like yourself and MPR and OPB out in Oregon.
Walker: I think there are some that are owned – like WBUR in Boston. They are owned by the University, they’re great. They’ve been able to build a really strong news department. I was talking to somebody from WSHU. They’re owned by Sacred Heart University. They have a real investment in news. I think partnerships… where there isn’t a strong public radio station… Hopefully there will be entrepreneurial ventures even where there is. We’re working with Pro Publica. We’re working with the BBC, WGBH and others, so I think partnerships will help. I think there are people in every community where there are great journalists, like you, and great reporters. I think we need a new model. Owned by the people? I’d love to hear more about it. I’m not sure.
Witt: Well I’m just thinking in terms of co-operatives. Go out a say “you want a journalist to cover civil rights? We’ll get you the journalist, we’ll build the infrastructure, you can be an owner of this co-operative just like you would be of a food co-operative, or just like you would be if you were in Green Bay and that’s a co-operative ownership of that team. It would prevent the Sam Zells taking over, it would make sure the money went right directly to the news, and people would have a vote, even on some of the board members.
Walker: So who are the members, just anybody?
Witt: Anybody who wants to pay in the public. I know it sounds bizarre but I’m actually getting some traction on this in Georgia.
Walker: That’s interesting.
Witt: It would be great to partner with public media stations especially those that have some problems with going out and doing the coverage themselves. It’s sort of like Pro Publica, but rather than doing just investigative reporting this might be on civil rights or endangered species or whatever.
Walker: Vertical themes?
Witt: Right. Right.
Walker: Somebody mentioned the Argo Project that NPR is kind of the catalyst for, and that’s really about, I think about 12 different streams of more in depth coverage. I think it’s a very interesting model.
A new picture of how we get our news is emerging from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. A new study shows the internet is now the third most popular news source, behind local and national television news, beating out newspapers and radio. Here are some revealing numbers:
92% of Americans get their news from multiple platforms
61% get some of their news online
80% have cell phones, and 33% of them access news on cell phones
37% of online users contribute to news stories, comment, or share stories by posting them on Facebook or Twitter
One conclusion of this report is that smart phones have turned news consumption into an “anytime, anywhere affair” for many avid news consumers.
Conde Nast is launching tablet versions of it’s top magazines, starting next month with GQ. Vanity Fair and Wired will follow in June, while The New Yorker and Glamour will launch next summer. The New York Times reports the publisher is testing different prices, ads, and other digital approaches over the next six months, to learn how to generate revenue from digitized content.
TV Newser looks at the pros and cons of digital one-man bands – reporters who shoot and edit video in addition to reporting and writing stories. Charles Bierbauer at the University of South Carolina, Gwen Ifill at PBS, Lou Ureneck at Boston University and Andy Mendelson at Temple all weigh the cost savings against the impact on the quality of journalism.
The Newspaper Association of America has a new poll showing 57% of adults prefer newspaper websites for local information and online advertising. The survey of 3,050 people is called Site Matters: The Value of Local Newspaper Web Sites. It ranks newspapers tops for local news, sports, entertainment and classifieds. This should give hope to newspaper execs, who are searching for ways to save their papers, and make their websites more profitable.
Spot.Us is a crowd-funded website that helps freelance journalists pitch a story idea, and hopefully raise money from people who see it. The site has now added social networking connections, a progress blog for each story, and a widget for third-party websites. Other enhancements allow a citizen journalist to volunteer their help with a specific story. Readwriteweb has more on how you can use Spot.Us.
Penelope Abernathy, the Knight Chair in Digital Media Economics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, says “Everyone likes to talk about how quality news is very expensive, but it pales in comparison to what the costs to sustain a two-century old legacy system of printing and distribution are,” adding, “The first is that they really have to come up with a timeline for shedding the legacy costs.”
See this full Leonard Witt Future of Journalism series video interview and transcript below. For alerts to upcoming Future of Journalism posts sign up on the Center for Sustainable Journalism home page.
Leonard Witt: Hi, I’m Len Witt, and I’m here with Penelope Abernathy. And I’ll let Penelope talk about who she is and what she does. We’re at the Yale conference that has to do with the new news ecology and who will pay for the messenger. So Penelope, tell us a little bit about yourself, first.
Penelope Abernathy: Hi there. I’m Penelope Muse Abernathy. I’m the Knight Chair in Digital Media Economics at UNC at Chapel Hill. I am a long time media hound. I spent the first half as a journalist, switched over to the business side after I got an MBA. And I have spent the last 20 years on the business side, working at institutions ranging from the New York Times, to Harvard, to the Wall Street Journal, to working with papers ranging in size from a small weekly in my home town of 57,000, all the way up to the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
Witt: Was that Phil Meyers’ Chair that you..
Abernathy: Yeah, I absolutely have Phil Meyers’ Chair. There’s a wonderful tradition set up by one person that went on for quite some time.
Witt: And we put a conference on with him not too long ago called the Wake-up Call. Those are big shoes to fill. So tell me you’ve had a couple of papers here that I saw. What were the papers about and what’s your topic?
Abernathy: I am one of those bilingual people. I can understand what journalists are saying when they worry about the very important function they fulfilled in the 20th century, especially the latter half of the 20th century. Through a whole range of bringing to light not only the issues the public needed to be concerned about, whether it’s health care issues right now, or whether it’s a watchdog function, such as the Watergate era. So I hear what the journalists are saying as they worry about the crumbling business foundation for what sustained that journalism, at least in the last half of the 20th century. But I’m also trained by the business side and I’ve spent a good deal of time working with online methods of distribution for the last 20 years, beginning with NYTimes.com. I was the SVP of planning, strategic planning, and actually set the site up and was responsible for it for the two years before it actually became an entity.
So I’m very familiar with what the economics are in this new and changing environment. But also as a business person I’ve trained a lot on what the strategies are in other industries and how they’ve dealt with this very disruptive form of technology that’s hit everything from technology to the financial services industry. My concern is putting the two languages together and coming up during this time of transition, trying to understand what the trends are that are emerging, and what the potential is on the other side of this storm, as some might call it, to what will be left behind after the storm departs and the waters recede.
Witt: So what will be on the other side?
Abernathy: I think a lot of people looked at the internet as starting the golden age of communication and I think we do have the potential to enter into that. I think it will be a very different business model from what was sustained journalism in the last half of the 20th century. In reality, that was kind of an oddity in many ways. It was based on being, for the most part for newspapers, it was based on being a defacto monopoly, a defacto geographic monopoly. The internet destroyed that monopoly. And I think what will happen is that once they adjust to this new landscape we’ll thrive in it.
There are a number of things traditional news organizations need to do. The first is that they really have to come up with a timeline for shedding the legacy costs. The legacy cost of primarily the printing and distribution that date back for two centuries as quickly as they can, in part because that’s the most burdensome part of the cost structure for them. Everyone likes to talk about how quality news is very expensive, but it pales in comparison to what the costs to sustain a two-century old legacy system of printing and distribution are. And there’s another reason for doing that. Peoples’ habits are changing very, very, very quickly. All number of surveys have come out to show that the Gen-Xers or the Millenials, those under 25, have already organized their lives around this new technology, and I think those who are older are reorganizing their lives around it. So in addition to helping the balance sheet, if traditional news organizations shed those legacy costs, it also helps position them for the 21st century. And then I’ve talked a lot about where the new revenue is going to come from. It’s traditionally come, 85%, from advertizing. And I think we’re looking at some combination of both subscriber and advertizing continue to support it on the other side of the storm. There may be some market disruptions over the next 5 to 10 years, but it will sort itself out.
Witt: So you sound fairly confident that we will have high quality, ethically sound journalism that’ll keep the public informed so they’re good actors in the public square?
Abernathy: I think the good news is for the last two centuries, the U.S. has managed to put together an incredible system, and I’ve traveled a great deal the last 20 years on the business side for both the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard, and I was continually amazed at how vibrant the U.S. journalism was. That’s based in part on that it has a system for supporting itself that’s very different. It’s based in part on the wonderful legal decisions that were made in the 20th century that supported the First Amendment in a way no other country has really supported it. And so I think that, and what happened , too, if you look at it, while many papers have done public service, it’s also a good business choice to put together credible information and attract a community built around that credible information. I’m relatively confident somebody’s going to figure that out again in the 21st century. I hope the ones that were the 20th century standard bearers make the transition, and I think there’s a good indication they probably will. I think the brands that were very dominant and well known in the 20th century should be able to transition into the 21st. But I’m also sure others will, too.
Witt: Okay. So you sound to be an optimist. Is that correct?
Abernathy: I’ve been accused of seeing the glass 95% full.
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There would be no Center for Sustainable Journalism without Ruth Ann Harnisch, president of the Harnisch Foundation, whose inspirational, intellectual and financial support has made the Center possible.
