56 page report on the outlook of the industry ask lots of great questions the industry should be asking itself like “What does your audience want from you – and do you
know what they will pay for?”, many newspapers have not honestly asked themselves this question because if they did they would be the largest creators of business websites in their DMA.

Newspaper Outlook 2009 Related Video (sorry PWC doesn’t allow embeds at this point).

RI- what is your affiliation with journalism online LLC?
MB- I am the strategy consultant at the moment, this is a start-up so we all have varied roles.

RI- I see in your Bio that you are an advisor to evri.com, a site that looks and feels to me like a news aggregator, does this complicate your involvement with Journalism Online LLC?
MB- No, it’s not an aggregator at all it is a natural language search site that builds related topics pages for new sites and others.  Our largest distribution deal is with WashingtonPost.com and if you look at the bottom of every new story page you’ll see our widget there.

*RI- I’ve never seen the widget because ever since the WashingtonPost put up their membership wall, I don’t visit the site.  But for the purposes of this interview I backed in through Google News and found the widget here:

RI- Do you have a domain name picked out or a name for your site?
MB- No, our brand is still something we are thinking through.  The corporate entity, Journalism Online LLC, is the only naming we have decided on.

RI- What publishers have agreed to sign on?
MB- We have no deals to announce since we launched 2 days ago, but we are speaking with many interested parties.

RI- Do you have a Facebook or Twitter account?  Do the other founders?
MB- Me personally, yes.  Gordon has both as well.  For the company, we are building our own Facebook and twitter pages and strategies right now.  …Social media development is an important part of succeeding online.

RI- What free news sites do you visit personally?
MB- Ha!  That’s a ridiculous question because you know I’m going to say MSNBC.com because I built it in 1996!  I don’t have any great insights into that except to say that it’s my homepage.

RI- Do you see a free site like MSNBC.com as a free competitor to what you are attempting to do with Journalism Online LLC?
MB- Not necessarily, They’re in the same bucket as people who produce newspapers and wire services who produce content and are looking for greater margins and new revenue streams.  They have great ambitions and would like to hire more people and do new things, though I haven’t spoken to them i’m sure they are intersted in creating new subscription products.  We’ll be talking to them in the future I’m sure.

RI- Do you expect traffic to go down if a publisher sign on to your service and puts up a pay wall?
MB- Of course we expect a loss of audience in the short term as habits evolve but we certainly don’t see a loss in revenue.  Over the long term, those audiences will return in large numbers.

RI- When faced with free options, why will they return?  It is because you feel paid content is a superior product?
MB- Quality content in all categories whether it is Sports Illustrated or Glamour Magazine or CNN or Washington Post has a long history of attracting lots of eyeballs and quality brands will ultimately be successful.  So, we’re convinced that permutations of what we are proposing will work.

RI- It seems to me you are using the term “quality brands” and “legacy brands” interchangeably? There are new media outlets available that are doing great things without a pay wall.
MB- You’re preaching to the choir there.  There was no MSNBC in 1995, there was no TalkingPointsMemo, There was no Huffington Post.

RI- So you’re saying that MSNBC is looking to put its content behind a paywall as well?
MB- I’ve had no conversations with them whatsoever but I know for a fact that quality online only brands are concerned with the long term viability of their advertising only revenue model.

RI- I’d like to see a press release between you guys and a new media outlet verifying that claim.
MB- Verify it right now.  Call up anybody running an online only website and ask them if they are intersted in developing subscription revenue models.

RI- I kind of did, in a recent interview I asked Liz George from Baristanet the following question: If newspaper websites put up a paywall would it hurt your business or help it? What is your opinion on paywalls? and this is her answer: The pay firewall was a bust for the New York Times. In general, I think paywalls are not smart. They go against the spirit of the Internet and they drive people from your site. As far as how it would affect us, I don’t think it would hurt us, and it might actually help.
MB- That’s a different question than I pose.  I don’t think the downturn in the newspaper industry affects negatively affects hyperlocal or national niche sites, it gives them a bigger business opportunity.  But that’s different than asking them, “is your long term belief with certainty that your only revenue stream is advertising”?  I think they would say “no, we’ve often thought about what kind of subscription products we can offer our audience”.

RI- Ok, what happens if I buy an article only to find it is now what I anticipated?  Do I get a refund?
MB- We haven’t work out our pricing strategies to that detail but that’s not an unanticipated problem.  It happens with magazine subscriptions all the time, we just have take that model and transform it to our situation.

RI- When you are envisioning your site, is there anything can share about the look or feel?
MB- We’re not even sure if we are going to have a content repository.  We are going to have a site that is a store front in the spirit of Amazon.com.  We are not trying to create a news portal.  It is not on our agenda.  We are not going to discourage sharing via social media. WSJ is a partial pay site that does a good job of it now.

RI- How do you plan to build critical masses of paying customers and of content? You will need to have a critical mass of customers before publishers will be willing to put some of their content that could generate ad revenue behind a pay wall instead. And they will need to have a critical mass of content before readers will sign up.  This seems to me like a critical switch you attempting.
MB- I agree that that’s a critical issue. We are going to do a lot of testing.  We can’t imagine a scenario where in the first month, 20 large publishing companies put 100% of their content behind a paywall.  We are going to do lots of testing and find out whether newspaper y’s sports content is good for a subscription model or magazine x’s utility content works well and gather data and move on that.  We’re trying to build a collaborative model that takes advantage of experiences that people will build over time and get it right.

RI- what’s been the biggest pushback from those in the know and the ordinary citizen who couldn’t care less?
MB- To your latter part first, the convenional street wisdom is that everything is free on the internet and that’s how it should always be is kind of a cliche.  The second one from the publishers is “what is the risk to our advertisers”?  Our expereince has been that ad inventory delivered to paid site commands higher cpms than a free site.

RI- Have you spoken to a large advertiser like proctor and gamble?  What’s been their reaction to your idea?
MB- Yes.

RI- Yes… anyone in particular?  anything you can share?
MB- No I won’t tell you what advertisers or publishers we’ve spoken to.

RI- Alright, thanks for your time and good luck.
MB- Thank you, we hope to hear from you again soon.

To learn more about Journalism Online LLC visit their site.

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Brill: Bring Back an Old Business Model for New Media -from advertising age

Media Executives Plan Online Service to Charge for Content -from NYTimes.com

THE AMERICAN NEWS PROJECT AND THE ATLANTIC PHILANTHROPIES JOIN HUFFPOST IN BACKING FUND

Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University School of Journalism
To Collaborate with Fund By Involving Students in Investigative Projects

(New York, NY) — March 29, 2009 — The Huffington Post announced today that it is launching a new initiative to produce a wide range of investigative journalism — The Huffington Post Investigative Fund. It is being funded by The Huffington Post and The Atlantic Philanthropies, and will be headed by Nick Penniman, founder of The American News Project, which will be folded into the Investigative Fund.

“The importance of investigative journalism cannot be overstated — especially during our tumultuous times — and we are delighted to be creating an initiative whose goal is to produce stories that will have a real impact both nationally and locally,” said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post. “Everyone who recognizes the role good journalism plays in our democracy is looking for ways to preserve it during this time of great transition for the media. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is one of the ways we are addressing that need, while also providing work and a platform for seasoned journalists downsized by major media outlets. We are grateful to the American News Project and The Atlantic Philanthropies for their generous contributions, and intend to engage with other donors as we continue to expand the Fund.”

Kenneth Lerer, co-founder and chairman of The Huffington Post, said, “There is no more critical reporting than investigative journalism. This nonprofit investigative journalism venture is a very important and logical next step for The Huffington Post. Our mission will be to produce and distribute distinguished, independent journalism made widely-available to all news outlets. We are proud to be working with our prestigious partners and look forward to expanding and building upon this venture with other investigative news organizations from around the country, and the world.”

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund, headquartered in Washington, DC, will produce a broad range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers, with a focus on working with the many experienced reporters and writers impacted by the economic contraction. The pieces will range from long-form investigations to short breaking news stories and will be presented in a variety of media — including text, audio and video — and will be free for any media outlet to publish simultaneously. The Huffington Post Investigative Fund will have an initial budget of $1.75 million.

Nick Penniman, Executive Director of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, said: “I’m looking forward to producing journalism that can have an impact, and that incorporates the best of traditional journalism and the tools of new media and distributed journalism.”

Jay Rosen, associate professor of journalism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, will serve as a senior advisor to the project. Rosen, as a director of NewAssignment.Net, his research project at NYU, previously collaborated with The Huffington Post on OffTheBus — an experiment in citizen journalism that drew 12,000 contributors and gained widespread media attention for its coverage of the 2008 campaign.

Said Rosen: “In addition to collaborating on OffTheBus, I’ve been writing for years about this possibility – distributed reporting projects that efficiently coordinate the efforts of volunteers, data-combing efforts that are open source, as well as teams of pros and amateurs working together — and I think The Huffington Post Investigative Fund is the next logical step.”

By leveraging The Huffington Post’s growing audience, along with the growing audience of other online news outlets, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund will also provide a higher profile for the work of existing investigative reporting outfits with which it will partner, including Spot.US, The Center for Public Integrity, The Institute for Justice and Journalism, The Center for Investigative Reporting, and The European Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Additionally, the Huffington Post Investigative Fund will work closely with Eyes & Ears, HuffPost’s citizen journalism project, harnessing the power of HuffPost’s community of engaged readers to yield research, insights, and information.

Sheila Coronel, Director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at the Columbia University’s Journalism School, who has consulted with The Huffington Post Investigative Fund, said, “This is an exciting development and we look forward to having our students work on investigative projects with this new venture. Now more than ever, we need strong collaboration and funding for journalism that holds individuals and institutions accountable.”

About The Huffington Post: The Huffington Post (www.huffingtonpost.com) is a leading news and opinion site which in three and a half years has become an influential media brand–The Internet Newspaper.” The site offers coverage of politics, media, business, entertainment, living, style, green, world and comedy, and is a top destination for news, blogs and original content. In 2008, the site launched its first local version, HuffPost Chicago. The Huffington Post (“HuffPost”) has 20 million unique users each month and is the most-linked-to blog on the Internet, per Technorati. HuffPost has an active community, with over one million comments made on the site each month. The Huffington Post has over 3,000 influential bloggers — from politicians and celebrities to academics and policy experts — who contribute in real-time on a wide-range of topics making news today. Among those who have blogged on HuffPost are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Larry David, Nora Ephron, Madeleine Albright, Robert Redford, Neil Young, Rahm Emanuel, Albert Brooks, Mia Farrow, Russ Feingold, Al Franken, Ari Emanuel, Gary Hart, Edward Kennedy, Harry Shearer, John Kerry, Bill Maher, Nancy Pelosi, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ryan Reynolds, Craig Newmark, and Alec Baldwin. A comprehensive list of the contributors to The Huffington Post can be found in its blogger index.

About The Atlantic Philanthropies: The Atlantic Philanthropies are dedicated to bringing about lasting changes in the lives of disadvantaged and vulnerable people. Atlantic focuses on four critical social problems: Ageing, Children & Youth, Population Health, and Reconciliation & Human Rights. Programmes funded by Atlantic operate in Australia, Bermuda, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, South Africa, the United States and Viet Nam. To learn more, please visit: www.atlanticphilanthropies.org.

About American News Project: Created in the spring of 2008, the American News Project is dedicated to creating original, independent video journalism for the Web. Its more than 150 video reports have received millions of views on thousands of websites throughout the world. Some have been rebroadcast on traditional television networks, and dozens more on satellite networks. For its work, it has received multiple Telly awards and is currently in the running for a Webby. Its seven producer-reporters, a mix of broadcast journalists and documentary filmmakers, have forged editorial partnerships with operations such as The Huffington Post and the McClatchy newspaper company, and have covered a variety of topics, from troop malfeasance in Iraq, to the lack of transparency and accountability in the financial bailout, to the think tanks and lobbyists that hold sway over major policy decisions. ANP is a nonprofit operation, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

About The Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia’s Journalism School: The Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia’s Journalism School administers an exclusive track for master’s students who want to specialize in investigative journalism. It oversees the Stabile Investigative Project Fund, which supports the most important and promising reporting by the Center’s students. Since 2007, the Center’s student projects have come out in The New York Times, National Public Radio, Mother Jones, and other publications. For more information: www.stabilecenter.org

Contact:
Mario Ruiz
VP, Media Relations
mario@huffingtonpost.com

###

RELATED:

Announcing the Launch of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund -from huffington post

Rosen’s Flying Seminar In The Future of News -from pressthink

The following is a speech Steven Berlin Johnson gave yesterday at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin.Can we expect the general public to navigate the new ecosystem with the same skill and discretion?

Let’s say for the sake of argument that we can’t. Let’s say it’s just too overwhelming for the average consumer to sort through all the new voices available online, to separate fact from fiction, reporting from rumor-mongering. Let’s say they need some kind of authoritative guide, to help them find all the useful information that’s proliferating out there in the wild.

If only there were some institution that had a reputation for journalistic integrity that had a staff of trained editors and a growing audience arriving at its web site every day seeking quality information. If only…

Of course, we have thousands of these institutions. They’re called newspapers.  continue at link above

Here is the Qik video of his talk. You can read along at the link above.  The recording starts in section 2, paragraph 3, line 4 here:

or the print newspaper business: the future of news itself. Because there are really two worst case scenarios that we’re concerned about right now, and it’s important to distinguish between them. There is panic that newspapers are going to disappear as businesses. And then there’s panic that crucial information is going to disappear with them, that we’re going to suffer as culture because newspapers will no long be able to afford to generate the information we’ve relied on for so many years.

Steven is bullish on news and I like his take on the situation because it raises some new points and turns newspapers role into that of a filter.  Is he right? Who knows but hey, at least he’s thinking it through giving people ideas to knock down, manipulate or affirm.  He did give me one great idea so I fired off the email below to my local police and fire departments.  I look forward to their response.

To my township officials,

My name is Robert Ivan, I am an aberdeen-matawan local and run news media blog metaprinter.com.  I am writing to request a meeting with someone at your offices to set up an RSS feed for fire and police information.  I feel this would be a great service to our community and serve as a yardstick by which all other public service announcements will be measured.

The idea came about when I drove past the train station today to find a building had partially burned down.  Had I not driven past the building I would have known nothing about it.  It made me wonder what other crimes or disasters were occurring in my town, around my home, that I did not know about.

I hold an MA in Graphic Communications management and technology from NYU, have over 9 years experience in online media and web design, and am a member of the local chamber of commerce.  I would love to speak to someone about this.  I am not looking to profit from this enterprise, just get our community better connected as traditional media becomes increasingly less relevant.  My contact info is below.

Best,
Robert Ivan