Robert Niles: September 2008 archive
News websites need sharper focus, consistent design to attract audience, advertisers
September 26, 2008
A reader wrote, in response to Geneva Overholser's post relaunching OJR:"You say that the 'old business model for news is broken.' What does that mean? What part of it is broken? What part of it can we expect journalists to put in its place?"
Let me take on that one today.
If we back up enough, I think we'll find that core principles that power the news business remain viable in the Internet era. Advertisers continue to deliver billions of dollars to publishers. Heck, my wife and I make the bulk of our income from direct and networked ad sales on our websites, for a personal example.
Other concepts can work, as well. Christopher Kimball and his crew at Cook's Illustrated have shown that paid online content and offline subscriptions can support a robust ad-free publishing company. Non-profits such as the Consumers Union remain viable online, and other non-profits, such as ProPublica, show promise.
So people can, and are making a variety of concepts work, whether they be based on advertising, subscriptions and/or contributions and grant funding. So what has the Internet broken? More...
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Build your own echo chamber
September 19, 2008
How can journalists help their work stand out in a media marketplace that's become stuffed with competition from thousands of blogs, websites and social networks? Not to mention umpteen cable networks, satellite radio channels and time-sucking iPhone and Crackberry applications?The easy answer is for journalists to provide sharper, more engaging work that's, well, even louder than what we've offered our readers back when most newspapers had monopolies in their local markets. Fortunately, as the Internet slams us with new competition, it offers journalists new opportunities as well. Specifically, today I'd like to write about the opportunity the Internet provides us to build relationships with our readers that will help amplify our reporting and its influence in society.
Echo chambers have gotten a bad rap from some in journalism. But partisan media echo chambers can teach responsible journalists important lessons about how to motivate readers and to use the power of repetition to rebuild a newsroom's influence in its community. More...
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