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Most of these models make a critically flawed assumption: that everyone gets the same thing out of the content, and accordingly, that a one-size-fits-all soluti

Most of these models make a critically flawed assumption: that everyone gets the same thing out of the content, and accordingly, that a one-size-fits-all solution will accommodate everyone. We need to think more deeply about the statistical distribution patterns in consumption of journalism (or of content, period). For instance, many of the recent experiments in selling content -- music, movies, games, etc. -- online have resulted in an interesting dynamic, something like a power-law distribution. Approximately 5-8% of all users will account for 80% of the revenues generated. Instead of trying to beef up that percentage, we should think about tailoring a power version of the product to that power userbase, then charging them the price they're willing to pay (which may be much higher than a mass-market price). In the meantime, everyone else gets the basic version of the content for a more basic price. If this sounds like freemium, that's because it basically is. Freemium is a fancy word for what economists call price discrimination, i.e., charging different prices to different customer bases depending on different channels and/or needs. Saving journalism will mean getting really deep into the weeds on nailing the power law curve for any given type of content.

chrisballinger 14y ago
At OpenWatch ( https://openwatch.net https://openwatch.net ) we are trying to solve this very problem from the open-source hacker perspective. Our original pitch was that we would operate on a "freemium" model: offer our journalism tools for free to everyone so they can contribute to the commons, but charge money if you wanted to make your investigations "closed source", similar in a way to GitHub. Our hypothesis / current pitch is that people will pay money (either directly, or on a voluntary subscription basis) to support journalists and the causes they believe in. We are also a collaborative muckraking platform that allows people to get directly involved in the stories they care about by contributing verifiable phone calls, emails, or other primary source material through the platform. We only launched the beta version about a month ago, and are changing like crazy every day, but would love to position ourselves to become somewhat like the GitHub for Journalism in this new age of media. Since all of our content is CC-BY and we stress the importance of the availability of a story's "source code" in the form of primary source documents, we are hoping that in the future people will ask to see a journalist's "OpenWatch Profile" in the same way they ask for a programmer's "GitHub Profile" today.

chrisballinger 14y ago

At OpenWatch ( https://openwatch.net https://openwatch.net ) we are trying to solve this very problem from the open-source hacker perspective. Our original pitch was that we would operate on a "freemium" model: offer our journalism tools for free to everyone so they can contribute to the commons, but charge money if you wanted to make your investigations "closed source", similar in a way to GitHub. Our hypothesis / current pitch is that people will pay money (either directly, or on a voluntary subscription basis) to support journalists and the causes they believe in. We are also a collaborative muckraking platform that allows people to get directly involved in the stories they care about by contributing verifiable phone calls, emails, or other primary source material through the platform. We only launched the beta version about a month ago, and are changing like crazy every day, but would love to position ourselves to become somewhat like the GitHub for Journalism in this new age of media. Since all of our content is CC-BY and we stress the importance of the availability of a story's "source code" in the form of primary source documents, we are hoping that in the future people will ask to see a journalist's "OpenWatch Profile" in the same way they ask for a programmer's "GitHub Profile" today.