Newspapers Turning Ideas into Dollars. In America’s embattled newspaper industry, some business innovations are showing clear signs of success, according to a new report by the Pew Research Center. While many of these are occurring on the digital side, some papers are generating new print revenue-through circulation gains, niche products and even sales reorganization. The report follows a year-long effort to identify newspaper successes in the search for new business models.
This report analyzes four such dailies whose executives explained, in detail, the motivation and strategy behind their experiments and shared internal data about the results with the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. Their innovations-ranging from sales force restructuring to rebranding the print product to web consulting for local merchants-are generating significant new income.
One paper, contrary to a downward industry trend, has enjoyed an increase in overall revenue in both 2011 and 2012. The Naples (Fla.) THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL [SLIDE DECK] We need better entrepreneurial journalism courses. Here’s how to fix them. - SeanBlanda.com. I have an immense respect for the work of Jeff Jarvis at CUNY. While other people talk about revenue models for journalism, Jarvis actively teaches his students to explore for-profit businesses (see his curriculum here).
However, I find myself wanting more from Jarvis and other professors that teach entrepreneurial journalism. What exactly, are they teaching students? What is the success rate of these programs? I often wonder what the ideal entrepreneurial journalism class would look like. Below is my best guess on the class I wish I had when I went to school based on my experience with Technically Philly and Technically Media.
I think these classes should be less “Entrepreneurial Journalism 101″ and more “Y Combinator” or “DreamIt Ventures.” This is a simplistic break-down on how I’d do it: Lesson One: pay me. As a rule, students could not accept money from their friends or family. Lesson Two: Pick a niche. Key to this lesson will be avoiding redundancy and duplicate content. The newsonomics of breakthrough digital TV, from Aereo to Dyle and MundoFox to Google Fiber. In 1998, when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought the Los Angeles Dodgers, the storied franchise was worth $380 million.
News Corp. sold the team in 2003 for $430 million. After winning the ability to negotiate a new multi-billion sports TV contract this fall, they sold earlier this year for $2 billion, blowing the lid off sports property values. In 1994, the San Diego Padres were worth $80 million. After recently signing a 20-year deal with Fox Sports for $1.2 billion, they sold (pending league approval) for $800 million. Meanwhile, in 2000, the Los Angeles Times was worth at least $1.5 billion when it was sold as part of Times Mirror to Tribune Company.
Today, as it is newly readied for market out of the Tribune bankruptcy, it would go for something less than $250 million. It’s a reversal of fortune: Newspaper franchises that once outvalued baseball teams by 3-1 or 5-1 or 10-1 now see the inverse of that ratio. Two letters: TV. TV has continued to have great audience. Techdirt and the value of the velvet rope approach to media. We’ve argued before that many media companies seem to be taking the easy way out by implementing paywalls — hoping to duplicate the New York Times‘ experience — instead of trying a more membership-based “velvet rope” type of model. Among the few who are experimenting with this approach is Techdirt, the technology commentary and analysis site, which just launched some interesting features for members who choose to pay.
While they may not be applicable to every traditional media player’s business, they are still worth paying attention to. The site, which is run by founder Mike Masnick through a company called Floor 64 (Full disclosure: I consider Masnick a friend) has had an online store for some time now where readers and fans could come and buy the usual type of swag many publishers offer, including e-books based on the site’s coverage. In a lot of ways, what Masnick is offering readers is a similar kind of model, but without the help of Kickstarter. Forget display ads: Technically Media’s events-based business model is working. PHILADELPHIA — The year was 2008. Leaving their school newspaper behind, three Temple University graduates went looking for journalism jobs. Freelancing helped pay the bills, but they weren’t having any luck finding the full-time gigs they imagined. The more they looked, the more it seemed like the kind of jobs they wanted — smart, high-impact, tech-focused local reporting — didn’t really exist.
There were local tech writers out there, sure, but the amount of ink spent covering the Philly tech scene didn’t match its recent growth. The news organization this trio wanted to work for didn’t really exist, and the media companies that did exist weren’t really hiring. So they decided to start their own. The question was: How to pay the bills? Display advertising revenue didn’t seem like a viable option.
“We looked at larger entities like TechCrunch and a few other sites that we admire that were doing events,” co-founder Brian James Kirk told me. Rafat Ali on building a media company on top of public data. Ten years ago, Rafat Ali wanted to build a company that could chronicle the transformation of media and technology. Now he hopes to do it again, this time in the world of travel. His new project Skift sounds at first a lot like paidContent: a mix of original reporting and aggregation tailored for a savvy, niche, information-hungry audience.
But this time around, Ali is placing his bet less on a stable of journalists and more on a team of product designers, developers, and, yes, journalists. Skift wants to be a media company in the same way Politico or Bloomberg is a media company: an information provider with a news wrapper. Ali told me the way Skift will grow its audience and its fortunes will be through information services, not just news. But Skift is more than just a curator of travel news. Skift has a staff of four, including Ali, and they’ll be announcing the hire of a product development person soon. Also in the long-term plans for Skift: a membership or subscription service.