Might Not Right: Need to Monetize Driving Search for New News Models

Clay Shirkey was spot on in Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable – the world still needs journalism. The question is: what new model(s) will supplant the existing model in a world where revenue streams are key and information access is instantaneous and collaborative? The news industry is debating this issue as we breathe, contemplating such solutions as freemium accounts, Nichepapers, branding journalists rather than the news vehicle, new platforms such as spot.us and NewsTilt, university-community partnerships, and a host of other related possibilities. As Shirkey says, “Nothing will work, but everything might.”

One of the key factors driving innovation is the need to fund journalism through monetizing the consumption of information or building viable revenue streams through advertising or some other means. This business model is neither straightforward nor well conceptualized at this point. The public has largely rejected the hassle of micropayments but microaccounting on a broader, more seamless scale might yet work if the public does not feel it is being nickled and dimed to death (and, indeed, does not see how the nickels add up to pay for the content). The NECIR-BU collaboration is committed to promoting the democratic process and serving the public interest through investigative reporting. Providing headline news for free to satisfy the social media cloud while charging a premium for in-depth analysis (i.e., the freemium model) might be a viable means of developing high-quality, high-ethics, sustainable journalism. A variety of models might work, yet none is absolutely right for the job and all have their skeptics.

Clearly the journalistic world is in flux as new models are proposed and tested and thrown out like yesterday’s bathwater. Facebook alone has revolutionized the sharing of information easily (and freely) while Google has cornered the market on generating revenue streams. Perhaps tomorrow’s answer to today’s journalism quandary is somewhere at the intersection of how to generate Google-like revenue through a Facebook-like platform, a challenge that is still being worked through by grant-funded and endowment-funded innovators. Capitalizing on Facebook's $0.10/hour of time online through tools such as Facebook Connect might be a viable model for Newsonomics. Then again, maybe tomorrow’s answer has not yet been hatched.