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Current DateTime: 12:12:00 09 Feb 2012
LinksList Documentid: 23279714
Expiration DateTime: 2/9/2012 12:15:14 PM
Media Money Video Gallery
Sirius, Linkedin and Activision will report earnings. So are the stocks hot or not? CNBC's Julia Boorstin & John Carney ...
CNBC's Jon Fortt; Shaw Wu, Sterne Agee; and Mark Sue, RBC Capital Markets, discuss Cisco's latest earnings. Also, the u...
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Current DateTime: 12:12:00 09 Feb 2012
LinksList Documentid: 23279714
Expiration DateTime: 2/9/2012 12:15:14 PM

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Current DateTime: 12:12:00 09 Feb 2012
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    • Big Media Names Report Earnings 

        Sirius, Linkedin and Activision will report earnings. So are the stocks hot or not? CNBC's Julia Boorstin & John Carney weigh in.

    • Cisco & News Corp Report Earnings 

        CNBC's Jon Fortt; Shaw Wu, Sterne Agee; and Mark Sue, RBC Capital Markets, discuss Cisco's latest earnings. Also, the update on News Corp's earnings, with CNBC's Julia Boorstin.

    • News Corp Earnings Review 

        Rupert Murdoch just made some big progress in its hacking scandal, which will minimize the embarassing details shared in court, reports CNBC's Julia Boorstin.

    • The Trade on Sprint & Disney Update 

        The Fast Money crew with the trade on Sprint, ahead of its Q4 earnings. Also, CNBC's Julia Boorstin has an update from Disney's conference call, as well as the outlook for ad revenues.

    • Disney Conference Call Update 

        CNBC's Julia Boorstin has the latest details from Disney's conference call, reporting attendance is up at the theme parks, and the company will launch a new broadcast channel in Japan next month.

    • Disney's Iger on Q1 Results 

        Robert Iger, Walt Disney president & CEO, explains how the current quarter is trending in ad sales and parks bookings, with CNBC's Julia Boorstin and Maria Bartiromo.

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Current DateTime: 12:12:00 09 Feb 2012
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Current DateTime: 12:12:00 09 Feb 2012
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Current DateTime: 12:12:01 09 Feb 2012
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Apr.15
3:30 PM ET
Wednesday, 15 Apr 2009

Can An Online Article Superstore Save Journalism?

Woman using a computer
There's no question that journalism needs a new business model. But until now, no one has come up with the solution.

Three veterans of print publications are teaming up to launch their solution to the media-monetization problem.

Unlike most news sites, "Journalism Online's" golden bullet is *not* advertising; it all hinges on getting people to pay up. Journalism Online, set to launch in the fall, is an e-commerce platform on which news organizations can charge subscription fees or charge for individual articles. The site's real asset will be its technology, which publications can use either on Journalism Online's site, or which they can bring to their own websites.

The new venture's team has quite a promising combination of experience. Steven Brill, one of the co-founders, founded "American Lawyer" magazine, Court TV, as well as Brill's Content, a magazine that took a critical eye to the media and produced some highly-respected investigative articles before it closed in 2001. Perhaps most interesting, Brill created Contentville.com, a late 1990s website designed to be a clearing house for news and information online. The site crashed and burned in 2001, it wasn’t alone in doing so, but it sounds similar enough to this new venture that he may have gained some valuable experience.

Joining Brill are Gordon Crovitz, who was publisher of the Wall Street Journal and Leo Hindery, whose background is in cable. Hindery runs a media-oriented private equity fund and previously headed Tele-communications Inc. before it merged with AT&T in 1999. The Wall Street journal has managed to successfully establish a subscription business and cable is all about subscription, so we'll see if this trio can apply some of that experience.

With advertising revenue falling off a cliff, particularly for the publishing industry and as Internet ad growth slows, focusing on subscriptions makes sense. But with so much content available (ad-supported but effectively for free) it's unclear if people will really be willing to shell out for something they currently take for granted. And it could be confusing if publishers take advantage of the website's potential to charge different amounts for individual articles and subscriptions. As we've seen with the success of Apple's iTunes' one size fits all model, people don't like to think too much when making an online purchase.

Journalism Online won't just look to individuals for subscription revenue. Part of the plan is to negotiate fees for distributors like Google. Journalism Online, of course, thinks Google isn't paying enough. If the company can get enough small papers to join their ranks, they might have some decent negotiating power with Google. It certainly makes sense to try to scale this business. To tackle this part of the business they've hired attorney David Boies (he prosecuted the Microsoft antitrust case) and a former US solicitor general.

If anyone can make it work, its this group. They've got the experience. They've got the big names. Now they just need to get the content and committed relationships with major publications.

And this fall, we'll see if people will pay.

A New Way To Pay For Journalism
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