Vin Crosbie takes on the issue of who will pay for online news content. The central question for news content is not what is paying for it, but who.
Printed newspapers are not about to go away, but they are managing decline. That means a lot of management time spent on cost reduction and restructuring (new work practices, technology, workflows etc.).
Printed newspapers who take their product online will get advertising revenues, but those revenues won’t support the existing staff structures. Look at the emergence of The Politico – basically obsolescing bespoke political coverage.
The big online news providers are not reliant for their core revenues on maintaining declining operations. Reuters is one example. Its news operation was just 7% of the unmerged company’s business and will only get smaller when the Thomson merger goes through. BBC News is another. It is paid for by UK licence fee payers. These providers are basically happy to put news content online for free.
The future funders of general online news content will not be consumers themselves, nor advertising, nor micro-payments. They will be governments and businesses that see “independent” news provision as a public affairs spend.
4 responses to “The future funders of news”
Adrian, You may very well be right that governments will ultimately be the primary funders of news as a public service, as they have been in the UK with the BBC. But as for the US, I sure hope you are wrong. At the core of my nation’s founding principles is that governments will encroach on individuals’ natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness if given the opportunity. It is critical for citizens and the press to be vigilant. Thomas Jefferson used the term “fence” to describe the role the press should play. If the government is itself the primary funder of news, it will be inside the fence, and will not protect the public against itself. I actually do believe that the online advertising models now being developed in Silicon Valley will be fully capable of funding online news, and lately have been covering some of these early developents on my site. (Steve Boriss, The Future of News)
I think governments will remain smaller players (the BBC is something of an anomaly), but the story of news content is that it will support fewer traditional manufacturing jobs (i.e. journalists).
Adrian, Yes, fewer traditional manufacturing jounalist jobs. Also fewer backroom administrative staff, printers, delivery people, etc. But in my view of the future, more people paid to write and create media who will be spread through society (e.g. think tanks, PR firms, corporations, not for profits). A lot more people paid to edit. Fewer people paid to rewrite stories that come from news sources.
Couldn’t agree more.