3 ms·

In San Francisco, plans to start news web site

13 points by bootload 17y ago

ilamont 17y ago
Great idea, and I wish them well, but how will it be sustainable? I believe there have been a few other experiments with news orgs owned by or operated as nonprofits (The St. Petersburg Times springs to mind) yet even they've had to lay off people. Then you have the NPR/PBS models, nonprofits that use donations, grants, and "underwriting" to support free content operations, but they can be sustained because they are basically monopolies or oligopolies when shows are broadcast in local markets.
- biohacker42 17y ago
  I believe The Irish Times is funded by a grant. If the starting grant is big enough, in theory, it can sustain itself for ever even without additional donations. But theory and practice are often different in practice.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    I don't - is this a typo? Being Irish, your statement comes as a surprise to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irish_Times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irish_Times
    - asdjkf9asd 17y ago
      From Wikipedia: In 1974, ownership was transferred to a charitable trust, The Irish Times Trust. Grant, Trust, same thing? The article also mentions financial troubles when a major expansion coincided with a collapse in advertising rates, so it's not purely trust funded?
      - anigbrowl 17y ago
        Ah, no, that's a legal structure set up in such a way as to prevent commercial transfer. Not necessarily funding related at all...it's more like reconfiguring it to be a non-profit; it can still make money and pay salaries, but it can't be an investment vehicle.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  There are two scenarios in which this could sustain itself: a) use common business models (CPM ads, donations, occasional grants) while innovating on the content side to attract an uncommonly large audience b) innovate on the business side (new products and services) while pumping out fairly traditional content I know a few of the people involved with this effort and from what I hear, it sounds like they're hoping to leverage some new content sourcing methods (graduate journalism students) to cut costs and stay lean. I'm not seeing anything particularly novel on the business side, though. To get to NPR territory, where you have an audience who likes you enough to give you money just to read/listen to you, you've got to provide a truly excellent service (e.g. provide something pleasant to listen to while driving to work). I have yet to see an online newspaper-type site do anything so incredible or novel that it's readers chip in to support it. Furthermore, why do people keep thinking the NPR model is a good one for a text-based medium? There are tech blogs with audiences much much larger than this site will likely ever be, and yet they don't see asking their readers for money as a viable business model...

13 points by bootload 17y ago

Great idea, and I wish them well, but how will it be sustainable? I believe there have been a few other experiments with news orgs owned by or operated as nonprofits (The St. Petersburg Times springs to mind) yet even they've had to lay off people. Then you have the NPR/PBS models, nonprofits that use donations, grants, and "underwriting" to support free content operations, but they can be sustained because they are basically monopolies or oligopolies when shows are broadcast in local markets.

biohacker42 17y ago
I believe The Irish Times is funded by a grant. If the starting grant is big enough, in theory, it can sustain itself for ever even without additional donations. But theory and practice are often different in practice.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I don't - is this a typo? Being Irish, your statement comes as a surprise to me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irish_Times http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Irish_Times
  - asdjkf9asd 17y ago
    From Wikipedia: In 1974, ownership was transferred to a charitable trust, The Irish Times Trust. Grant, Trust, same thing? The article also mentions financial troubles when a major expansion coincided with a collapse in advertising rates, so it's not purely trust funded?
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      Ah, no, that's a legal structure set up in such a way as to prevent commercial transfer. Not necessarily funding related at all...it's more like reconfiguring it to be a non-profit; it can still make money and pay salaries, but it can't be an investment vehicle.
brandnewlow 17y ago
There are two scenarios in which this could sustain itself: a) use common business models (CPM ads, donations, occasional grants) while innovating on the content side to attract an uncommonly large audience b) innovate on the business side (new products and services) while pumping out fairly traditional content I know a few of the people involved with this effort and from what I hear, it sounds like they're hoping to leverage some new content sourcing methods (graduate journalism students) to cut costs and stay lean. I'm not seeing anything particularly novel on the business side, though. To get to NPR territory, where you have an audience who likes you enough to give you money just to read/listen to you, you've got to provide a truly excellent service (e.g. provide something pleasant to listen to while driving to work). I have yet to see an online newspaper-type site do anything so incredible or novel that it's readers chip in to support it. Furthermore, why do people keep thinking the NPR model is a good one for a text-based medium? There are tech blogs with audiences much much larger than this site will likely ever be, and yet they don't see asking their readers for money as a viable business model...