The Nieman Journalism Lab has published a fascinating article by the respected Ken Doctor pin the future of news publishing. Doctor pulls no punches in assessing where we are at today:
Until recently, the holy grail was summed up in two words: replacement revenue. Now the jig’s up. No matter how fast you shovel digital dirt into the chasm of print loss, you can’t recreate the past; you can’t fill the hole.
I’d agree with that. Here in Australia we have the two main publishers taking quite different approaches. News is putting much of its content beyond paywalls because it thinks people will pay to access it. Fairfax has a mixed paywall model and has a number of sites from which it derives income and can grow this significantly further.
I am surprised we have not seen significant digital-only start ups in the news space here. Seven or ten, for example, leveraging existing resources to provide digital only news outlets focused on their respective target audiences. Okay we have the publishers of Crikey investing in a number of sites. But not much else happening – unless I am missing it.
But I digress from Doctor’s article. It’s a fascinating read on options for news outlets and how they could generate requisite revenue for a future. I’m not aware of the six ideas he covers being pursued here in any big way. If you;re in news publishing it’s certainly worth a read.
From newsagents perspective, all of this is interesting because it shows that we must have a strategy for dealing with dramatic changes to products which have been at our core for decades.
Hi Mark, the Australian entrepreneurs starting up online media companies are out there but they are struggling to find investors.
Readership and advertising are also a problem as both markets are reluctant to move from their established channels.
When the advertisers make the break, it’s going to be really ugly for the established news outlets.