Non Profit News Reports about For Fee News
March 22, 2009
I read this National Public Radio story and experienced a mental dislocation. I don’t know much about NPR except that it runs really annoying fund raising events and sells ads to outfits who provide $100 DVDs to some folks. NPR has struggled when it received US government funding, and it continues to arm wrestle with accountants since it became whatever it is today.
The article that jarred me was “Newspapers Wade Into An Online-Only Future” by David Folkenflik. You must read it here unless you heard it on NPR, an activity that seems to be losing traction here in the Harrod’s Creek mine run off pond.
The story reported that newspapers have some problems with their centuries old business model. Newsprint, inks, union contracts, disinterested customers, and vanished advertisers–you know the litany of woes.
For me the most interesting comment was:
The online-only plan for newspapers remains an unproven financial model; there are great savings by scrapping printing and delivery costs, but even greater lost revenues, since advertisers pay far more money for print ads than online ads.
I relished the term “unproven.” I think it is the wrong term, and I think that any newspaper looking for online riches by charging for news that I can get on Twitter or a Web log is out of step with the young at heart.
These issues are small pommes frites, however. The real issue for me is that failing subsidized news outfits are writing about failing traditional print news outfits.
Now that’s a solid foundation for analyzing and resolving some fundamental problems in online.
Maybe the Beyond Search team will Tweet this post as an example of irony as the US embraces the consequences of the financial tailspin now underway.
Stephen Arnold, March 22, 2009
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