Ftc-business-models

FTC workshop: Afternoon panel: Emerging Business Models for Journalism

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This is page for rough, contemporaneous notes of today's U.S. Federal Trade Commission workshop: "From Town Crier to Blogggers: How Will journalism Survive the Internet Age," held Dec. 1-2, 2009, in Washington, D.C., at the FTC's 601 New Jersey Avenue offices. Your scribe is Bill Densmore, a fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism. Of course we've tried to provide accurate quotes and summaries. But the FTC has stenographers recording all of the testimony and that should be your definitive source. The home page for this coverage is http://www.newshare.com/wiki/index.php/ftc

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Now we're following along with the first Tuesday afternoon panel: Emerging Business Models for Journalism." Remarks by Steve Brill of Journalism Online are at viewable at the bottom of this page.

Lots of opportunities -- ideas from Lauren Rich Fine

Lauren Rich Fine, a former Wall Street newspaper analyst: "There are loyalists will pay pretty much any price and that's why i think Journalism Online will be successful."

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I don't think newspapers committed suicide, I don't think they ever had a chance.

"I think the ad model will work, I think we just need to broaden the definition of it." Newspapers should embrace bloggers and become the dominate local ad network in their community. There are not dominant local ad networks yet.

• Newspapers have not done enough with sponsorships.

• Scripps years ago tried to get into the Yellow Pages business. "But that opportunity does still exist online to create really comprehensive local directories . . . they could host these websites, they could create them for them." She is the daughter of a newspaper ad sales person -- and she says newspapers have had some of the worst sales forces in history.

NewsMax has a great business with their email marketing.

• On subscriber fees: She does not believe there will be a lot of subscriptions for online news. American Press Institute did a compendium recently, and it wasn't near 10%.

• Rearranging from geography to topics is what newspapers have to move to.

• I'm intrigued by the concept of memberships. She cites the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

• There are commerce opportunities.

• Matching content with advertisers, as with Demand Media and AOL is smart, but the flaw in the model is if you are trying to preserve democracy, giving people what they want is not going to yield what you want for democracy.

• Newspapers will be able to do syndicated research and licensing revenue streams (not a very big one).

• Print isn't dead. Newspapers still sell a lot of advertising. A lot of new sites being created for online only are finding -- like Politico -- that most of their money is made by printing. In the Cleveland area the Lakewood Obsever makes all their money printing every two weeks but has a strong, robust website.

WSJ's Thompson: Concubines and haggling

"Journalists should be feisty," says Robert Thompson, managing editor of the Wall Street Journal and editor-in-chief of Dow Jones & Co. "Not lapdogs with lap tops." He says government subsidies to journalism would create a class of "content concubines."

"Our intent was to provoke a debate about he value of content and then a debate about how content can best be monetized." He said the third phase will now be to figure out the exact models.

"There will be a lot of haggling over the following months and that is how it ought to be," says Thompson of the coming negotiations between publishers, aggregators and others over how to share value for content.

Chris Ahearn, president Reuters Media and Thompson Reuters

Ahearn on aggregators: "They do not always refrain from doing evil, although they say they do . . . . some do steal, outright, and the monetize it with ad networks with AdSense and that happens."

He is grapping with ways to make money out of content scarcity and content abundance. They focus on vertical markets and subscriptions -- 98% of their money comes from subscriptions and they focus on professionals. "We focus on services, we focus on things that add value - because people pay for service."

He sees a world for greater collaboration between aggregators and creators. "We see this as a new network of syndication predicated on the needs of audiences." He sees it as inherently multisource. "This is a B-to-B content network that the world needs now and one that we are building." He says: "This is not about locking people down ... about blocking search engines ... (but) letting the content creator pick the model they want."

He says they are optimistic. "We see the evolution of a new golden age of journalism and much, much more."

Josh Marshall: A business based on original report

Josh Marshall is founder and editor of the website Talking Points Memo. He says traditional news organizations are still working on the idea that they are are the sole source. They don't take that approach, although most of their 11-person staff does original reporting.

He says the concept of "fair use" is too expansive now. He thinks a common-sense standard needs to apply. When they do aggregation, when it comes to the margins, they follow a common sense standard.

Sri Kasi, The Associated Press

Srinandan Kasi quotes Ken Doctor's research that over 50% of people who read news snippets on aggregators or a home page don't click through.

"If you have described the details of a news story, you have told the news story," Kasi says. The original news gather has the cost of creating the works, "but only a fast shrinking opportunity" to monetize. He says for the sake of society, that cannot be allowed to continue.

What is the AP doing to help?

• Helping news organizations find more effective ways to monetize
• While consumer choice may be at the disaggregated story level, the story and publisher have to be part of a larger marketplace
• "Those who want the benefit content have to share in the cost."

Mark Bide, Automated Content Access Protocol

News organizations are dependent on copyright. Making a return on investment in content depends on having the mechanism to choose how that content is distributed and paid for. "If we want that content, we have to find online business models for news organizations."

"In the absense of functional business models, those who need to make a return will have no choice but to take their content or their business to some other place." He says the Internet has highlighted the importance of content. "The time has come now for this to change to make copyright work within the grain of technology rather than against it."

He manages the Automated Content Access Protocol. His focus is on creating a universal infrastructure not owned by anyone as an open standard that is available for anyone to use.

Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand

He started as a stringer for the Los Angeles Times in Orange County. He stumbled into covering search as a free-lancer in 1994 after leaving the Orange County Register. "I have had paid content on a website since 1997." He has a staff of two people. "We produce a good chunk of good healthy content in our topic area ... and we have done this by growing up on the web ... lead generation ... conferences . . . member fees."

He knows when someone takes a story he has written and it goes out and they won't cite him on a story.

"I love journalism and would like to see it preserved in some more productive ways rather than some of the rhetoric that we are hearing."

Jeff Jarvis: The link economy

He says now there is a link economy, not a content economy: "All you need is one copy of something and it is the links to it that bring it value." It is up to the recipient to monetize links and if you can't do that, that's your problem, not Google's.

At the City University of New York, he is developing a set of business model ideas for the new news ecology. The first thing he's studying is the hyperlocal blogger -- the local online news community. Some of them are bad business people, but they can be taught to sell ads better and do other things so they can have a sustainable business model.

The problem with the hyperlocal business model -- there has to be a network, by a few towns or by interests to aggregate the audience. "We believe there is still a new news organization, it is much, much smaller." He thinks it will still do investigative and metro-wide reporting. Because of the link economy it can work with other players in the news ecosystem.

What is the framework that allows these things to forum? He talks about the value of volunteerism. Just the edits alone in Wikipedia up to hundreds of millions of dollars of value per year. The true value of memberships is collaboration. There is a value to promoting goverment transparency.

Their estimated, using a Boston-like market, that you could get to about 270 reporters (vs. 300 in The Globe's newsroom). It is much, much smaller. "The mogul who says I'm this big isn't going to be that big anymore."

Barrier to entry to media has never been lower than in the history of mankind. There are more voices than ever. "But, what do need is a level playing field. But I beg you, Mr. Liebowitz, stay off the lawn." It isn't a matter of survival -- if you use that word, you are talking about the perspective of the legacy players. "All I want to ask is: Stay off the lawn."