New Matilda Races Against Deadline To Raise Money. Australians love to complain about big media and the complaints hit fever pitch during the 2010 election period.
Accusations of bias, shoddy reporting, slavish adherence to press statements, vested interests and worse were flung around on blogs, on Twitter, at barbecues and at the eternal Australian watercooler. Many journalists got in on the game and started berating their peers and competitors for sins of omission and distortion. Then Grogsgate happened and the big media started looking bigger and badder than ever. All this took place against a background of intense discussion about how online media outlets — big and small — will survive. Is advertising the answer — or are paywalls? By Wednesday, the readers, writers and editors of independent news and analysis site New Matilda will know whether or not the website will be publishing in 2011. Advertisement New Matilda has been a presence online since 2004 and we've published the work of more than 1000 Australian writers since then.
Love, money and independent media - Unleashed. Updated Of all the forces bearing down on Julian Assange right now - from threats of extradition, assassination to passport confiscation - WikiLeaks may be most at risk from the suspension of services by PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Google, and Amazon.
There may be a faceless army of hackers working on a voluntary basis for WikiLeaks but the organisation has relied on donations since it was established in 2006. If it can’t accept financial donations, WikiLeaks may struggle - no matter what happens to Assange. There are plenty of ways for entrepreneurial and energetic writers, editors, journalists and thinkers to get together and publish information on the internet and to do so at low or no cost.
But it’s no way to run a business. Yet the question of how to convince audiences to pay for the online media they access remains a vexed one. New Matilda Folds After Six Years Of No Profit. Australian independent media site New Matilda has announced that it will close June 25, after six years of operating without ever once making a profit.
Founded in 2004, New Matilda pitched itself as a fiercely independent Australian provider of news, analysis and satire. Prior to being acquired in 2007 for $10, New Matilda ran a subscription model which didn’t pay the bills. A switch to advertising supported content saw an increase in page views, but a continuing inability to cover costs. Editor Marina Cordell blames a lack of advertising for the demise of the site, writing “The advertising simply hasn’t followed. It’s always sad to see an online publication like New Matilda fold, and the site did provide an interesting read at times. The running cost (by which we presume hosting costs) claim doesn’t stack up: The Inquisitr would easily do 10x more traffic than New Matilda (if not more), and our hosting costs are US$400-$500 a month through a world class hosting company (Rackspace.)
Newmatilda.com.