4 ms·
Nice work-up by the OP. I think people are still in the mindset that the value produced by a journalist is in articles, period. I think there is more value to
by marciovm123 17y ago
Nice work-up by the OP.
I think people are still in the mindset that the value produced by a journalist is in articles, period. I think there is more value to be created in the interaction between journalist and audience that the web makes simple to execute.
For example, right now articles have to be the same for all subscribers. But there will be some subscribers who care more about a particular article (or topic) then others. Why not enable those extra-interested subscribers to pay more for additional information about a particular article, or interaction with the journalist? Articles could have multiple tiers of access, journalists could have VIP hangout areas where your comments are guaranteed to be responded to, etc. Or an audience could put up reward money for journalists to investigate a particular topic (this has probably been done already, right? EDIT: spot.us).
Right now everyone is forced to subsidize the "general" interest categories, so we get a million articles about the same top-10 topics of the day, and this sucks. Enabling additional revenue will not come from a different way to treat those same topics but rather from better ways of engaging with increasingly niche audience groups.
- cschwarm 17y agoI also think the future value of news is in the relationship to journalists and reporters. They need to become 'celebrities' to a certain degree. The Huffington Post is a good example. However, I think the transaction costs of crowd-sourcing articles are too high. People have better things to do then finding topics to fund. It already didn't work for open source projects. My favorite solution is still the club model as described here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678801 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678801
- greyman 17y agoI would object against naming HuffPo as a good example. 1) They are not profitable. 2) Quite a few of their articles are just rewrites of other journalists work. They read article in other media, and then re-tell it in their own words. Which of course is much cheaper than to really report. So they are dependent on other media in their operation, and also the point 1) applies. p.s: I don't have anything personal against HP, I just think they didn't prove anything yet.
- cschwarm 17y agoI meant the Huffington Post is a good example to make/use 'celebrities' in their 'Featured Blog Posts' section.