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[MrsTrellisfromNorthWales]

I'm with Slim. People have never paid much directly for their general news content. At best, the cover price of a newspaper may cover some of the distribution costs. In the online world, these costs are considerably lower.

 

The advertising landscape is certainly different in the online world. The good sites can focus adverts for products and services that are more likely to be of interest to specific readers: everybody wins. By using a service like Google AdWords to take the hassle out of managing advertising, the news organization can concern itself solely with generating compelling content which, after all, is what will ultimately drive up readership and increase advertising revenues.

 

The game inevitably changes over time - newspapers need to adapt to it or perish.

 

I agree with what much of what you're saying. It's about providing compelling content but nobody's been able to marry that with a revenue strategy that actually pays for it yet. If you've got the answer to that, you're doing better than the whole of journalism academia and the media will pay you billions.

 

Meanwhile, the media flounders around looking for this Holy Grail. Murdoch buys My Space but doesn't know what to do next. ITV buys Friends Reunited but doesn't know what to do next.

[localyokel]

With about 4 pages of "news" in the Indy I really wonder what "premium content" you get for paying a subscription. I wouldn't be signing up.

 

I agree with what Mrs Trellis says about it being difficult to make money out of online content but what local newspapers forget is that if you actually put lots of well written up to date news on the site more people key into it and you can sell more on-screen advertising around it. A point apparently lost on iomonline which posts no meaningful news at all so you have to go out and spend 60p for your paper a Tuesday.

 

Its a false economy.

 

Its hardly re-inventing the wheel - its called a portal - I think its been done before by those American chappies.

[Pragmatopian]

Here's a free idea, which I will give you under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence i.e. you can use it, share it, change it and benefit financially from it; just give me some credit.

 

localnews.co.uk - your source for local news and listings, wherever you may be.

 

(1) Readers register and provide details of the area where they live and the types of stories, products and services they're interested in. They pay no fee, and receive stories relevant to their area and interests.

 

(2) Journalists register and start submitting stories, which they code by area and type. They receive a share of advertising revenue based on readership and article ratings. Their rating is reduced if their articles are demonstrated to be incomplete or inaccurate.

 

(3) Advertisers register and submit advertisements and the geographic areas in which they're offering their products and services. Advertisers could even be rated by readers who consume their products, with this increasing the liklihood that they are displayed on the site. Ads are targetted at readers in the relevant location and with the relevant interests. Could include cinema listings, event notices etc.

 

(4) Central team develop and maintain the site and take a proportion of ad revenues. Editorial involvement would be limited to dealing with legal issues - quality would be self-regulated.

 

 

A bit rough round the edges perhaps, but includes concepts that have proven track records. I'm not saying it would be easy to strike the right balance, but if you did and managed to gain the necessary momentum, you could make a lot of money.

 

MySpace and Friends Reunited are good ideas poorly executed - Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, and del.icio.us are much better examples of social networking sites with real revenue potential.

[TomTucker]

Who is writing the Manx Herald? Some mysterious 'editor' and some random bloke called 'chas' with a manx.net address as far as I can see. Gives me great faith in their stories that does.

 

 

im not going to out him, but he has had his name in the press more than once so he is a "known head", there may be reasons why he is anonymous most likley to help get the website up and running without tarnishing it with preconceptions

[Slim]

Slim, you're simply wrong.

 

I'm not, I'm quite demonstratably correct. How about figures that say that online advertising spending has surpassed newspaper advertising spend.?

 

Nobody's making serious money from news on the net.

 

Utter rot. News corp for example, who's figures are available online, is now earing record revenues from advertising, up 33% this year mainly because of online editions of the Times and the Sun. The suns online bingo, an example of the sell through I was talking about, is the biggest online bingo in the country.

 

But lots of journalists are losing their jobs.

http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/NEWS/200...70531manc.shtml

 

A sad local isolated example, but I dont see anything to suggest it's an example of the industry as a whole.

 

The reason the nationals put their content online is not because they're making money from it but that they're scared. They're hoping somehow that the market will grow and become "monetised" as they put it. And if they didn't everyone would turn to the BBC anyway. They also believe that it's about expansion of "the brand".

 

I recon that's a valid view of the situation from about two years ago. There's been a lot of advertising spend headed online over the last year, and a lot of developments such as the massive advance of RSS and other aggrigation services that are giving content providers a bigger audience than ever before.

 

They're turning to "convergence", which is journalists doing work for newspapers, the net and possibly broadcasters too. This is really about sweating assets better. However, the reason they're doing it is that the traditional sources of income are drying up and newspaper companies are experimenting with trying to make money on the net. None has done it very successfully yet. Multimedia (that word is a tautology, it should be multimedium) strategies are a band aid - making the best of a bad job.

 

Moving away from print is a very good thing, the production and distribution of daily newspapers is an environmental dissaster, far better to recieve your news digitally every day with a fraction of the resources. So like any industry that's changing, there will be casualties, particulary the printing press and distribution networks. I dont agree that nobodys done this successfully, I think there's plenty of very good examples, not least newscorp frontrunning in this area.

 

Indeed, as I mentioned, the real cash cows are the worst hit. Classified advertising is going to ebay and it will go to Craig's List once it's really hit Britain.

 

Good, it's an improvement.

 

It's not just a newspaper pheonemon, either. Television audiences are splintering because of extra choice, but overall viewing is down considerably because of the internet. Younger television viewers watch far less television now than the same age groups 10 years ago.

 

I dont see how that's relevant. What's relevant is the number of eyes on adverts, and that's increased, not decreased.

 

I'm doing an MA on this. Can you tell?

 

Sorry, no. I think you're fundamentally wrong.

[MrsTrellisfromNorthWales]

Here's a free idea, which I will give you under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence i.e. you can use it, share it, change it and benefit financially from it; just give me some credit.

 

localnews.co.uk - your source for local news and listings, wherever you may be.

 

Good ideas.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayosphere is interesting about one experiment along similar lines.

 

MySpace and Friends Reunited are good ideas poorly executed - Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, and del.icio.us are much better examples of social networking sites with real revenue potential.

 

Absolutely. It's lovely to chat with your friends and share photos, isn't it? But can you wade through all that to find out if your MHK has voted for the incinerator?

[MrsTrellisfromNorthWales]

Utter rot. News corp for example, who's figures are available online, is now earing record revenues from advertising, up 33% this year mainly because of online editions of the Times and the Sun. The suns online bingo, an example of the sell through I was talking about, is the biggest online bingo in the country.

 

 

Johnston Press's digital income is up more than 33 per cent. (Owner of IoM Newspapers) But overall income is still down more than 2 per cent. And they're doing quite well compared with the rest of the industy. It's easy to have a double digit increase from a small base. And overall internet advertising is up and big. That's MY point. My other point is that it's not now subsidising journalism any more. It's going to sites like Google, whose news service is a parasite on news services.

 

But lots of journalists are losing their jobs.

http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/NEWS/200...70531manc.shtml

 

A sad local isolated example, but I dont see anything to suggest it's an example of the industry as a whole.

 

http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/591717/

 

I'd be very grateful for a link to a news story that says how much News Corp is making out of the internet through The Times and The Sun.

[Slim]

Johnston Press's digital income is up more than 33 per cent. (Owner of IoM Newspapers) But overall income is still down more than 2 per cent. And they're doing quite well compared with the rest of the industy. It's easy to have a double digit increase from a small base. And overall internet advertising is up and big. That's MY point. My other point is that it's not now subsidising journalism any more. It's going to sites like Google, whose news service is a parasite on news services.

 

Your view is utterly skewed. Google isn't a parasite, it's exactly the opposite, aggregation like google is what's taking content that might have been previously read by very few and taking it global, and getting that paid for through highly successful targetted advertising.

 

http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/591717/

I'd be very grateful for a link to a news story that says how much News Corp is making out of the internet through The Times and The Sun.

 

Your link shows the telegraph, who's online offering is piss poor, joining their print and online journalists? Hows that relevant? Seems an entirely sensible thing to do, why produce that content twice?

[MrsTrellisfromNorthWales]

News Corp story link?

[Slim]

News Corp story link?

 

They're a public company, all their figures are available on the net.

[MrsTrellisfromNorthWales]

News Corp story link?

 

They're a public company, all their figures are available on the net.

 

Been searching. No luck

[slinkydevil]

News Corp story link?

 

They're a public company, all their figures are available on the net.

 

Been searching. No luck

 

Try here:

 

http://www.newscorp.com/news/index.html

 

05.09.2007 3rd Quarter Fiscal 2007 Earnings Release

 

It might be in this document although I haven't read through it myself.

[Ean]

Here's a free idea, which I will give you under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence i.e. you can use it, share it, change it and benefit financially from it; just give me some credit.

 

localnews.co.uk - your source for local news and listings, wherever you may be.

 

Participatory journalism is unfortunately not your unique idea so i don't think you can apply the CCA to it. Adding to Mrs. Trellis' link try http://english.ohmynews.com/ as an example of a successful usage of citizens as reporters, the S. Korean version (the original ohmynews) is very successful i believe it is the most popular news provider in the country.

[Pragmatopian]

Here's a free idea, which I will give you under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence i.e. you can use it, share it, change it and benefit financially from it; just give me some credit.

 

localnews.co.uk - your source for local news and listings, wherever you may be.

 

Participatory journalism is unfortunately not your unique idea so i don't think you can apply the CCA to it. Adding to Mrs. Trellis' link try http://english.ohmynews.com/ as an example of a successful usage of citizens as reporters, the S. Korean version (the original ohmynews) is very successful i believe it is the most popular news provider in the country.

 

My idea wasn't really of citizen reporters - rather of career journalists distributing and being rewarded for their work through a new model, although admittedly it may be difficult to define 'career journalist' for the purposes of registration.