August 17, 2008
It’s time to get down to business. Over previous weeks I’ve been clamouring on about the future of journalism on the internet. That’s all very well, but how can news which is provided for free on the net make the money needed to support quality journalism? You’re all thinking ‘helloooo…advertising obviously’.
Well you’re right, to an extent. Advertising on popular news sites will certainly provide some revenue, but newspapers really haven’t worked out a way to tame the beast that is internet classifieds. Newspaper classifieds were rivers of gold, the main money maker. Now with CareerOne, Seek, and carsales just a click away, the need for newspaper classifieds (and the online version of these) is dwindling.
Yet we can cling to a skerrick of hope for the future of journalism. Fred Wilson points out some ways to make money around free content in his article on wired.com. Maybe Dad was right, nothing is ever really free.
The fact is that advertisers will pay for publicity: views, clicks, links, transactions, banner ads, endorsements, and any bit of attention they can grab in between. There could be enough new advertising opportunities created by the internet to offset the loss of classifieds. Only time will tell if the ever growing internet news platform can reflect its popularity in gleaming gold.
Check out cyberjournlaist and this interesting interview with The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade for more about the financial shortfalls of online news so far.
