- Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg to Harvard Grads: ‘Can You Click On an Ad or Two’
- NCTA Trends: Mobile video, Watch ESPN and TV Everywhere
- Discovery CEO David Zaslav on OWN, Global Growth & Netflix Impact
- National Cable Show: Cloud, Wifi, TV Everywhere Loom Large
- Facebook: Hacking All Night to an IPO
- Why Facebook Is Celebrating Its IPO With a Hackathon
- Inside Facebook's Money Machine
- Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook's Billion-Dollar Woman
- Diablo III Launch Breaks Records and Servers
- Privacy in Focus Ahead of Facebook IPO
More Videos
- Facebook's COO Sheryl Sandberg to Harvard Grads: ‘Can You Click On an Ad or Two’
- NCTA Trends: Mobile video, Watch ESPN and TV Everywhere
- Discovery CEO David Zaslav on OWN, Global Growth & Netflix Impact
- National Cable Show: Cloud, Wifi, TV Everywhere Loom Large
- Facebook: Hacking All Night to an IPO
- Why Facebook Is Celebrating Its IPO With a Hackathon
- Inside Facebook's Money Machine
- Sheryl Sandberg: Facebook's Billion-Dollar Woman
- Diablo III Launch Breaks Records and Servers
- Privacy in Focus Ahead of Facebook IPO
RSS FEED
MOST SHARED
- As Euro Bond Wins Supporters, Details Remain Vague
- BOJ Eased to Ensure Recovery, Won't Act 'Automatically'
- Lady Gaga Cancels Indonesia Concert on Security Fears
- Renesas Sinks 11% as It Braces for Costly Restructuring
- China Industrial Profits Down on Slowing Growth
- Gome Slumps to 3-Half Year Low After Poor Earnings
- IMF Chief Lagarde: Little Sympathy for Greece
- Euro Rallies as Greece's Pro-Bailout Parties Gain Favor
- Brent Crude Rises Above $107; Greece, Iran Eyed
- Billionaire Kwok Brothers Renew Bail in HK Graft Probe
- A New Look at the ‘New Poor’
- Six Pack: Beer Buzz of the Week
- Greek Exit Could Trigger 50% Fall in Euro Stocks: Analyst
- Under Pressure, FHA Skews to Wealthier Home Buyers
- Big Stock Upside for Hudson City Deal: Analyst
- 5 High-Yield Stocks Ready to Boost Dividends
- Yoshikami: Four Things You Need to Know About Gold Now
- Steinbock: The Euro Zone Endgame Begins
- Option Bulls Take Another Shot on Idenix
- Euro Bond Wins Supporters, but Details Remain Vague
- Euro Rallies as Greece's Pro-Bailout Parties Gain Favor
- Buy Asian Stocks as Market Panics Over Europe: Expert
- Oil May Slip to Mid-$80s as Europe Weighs: Survey
- Week Ahead: Europe Has Wall Street Bull on Short Leash
- Spain May Recapitalize Bankia With Government Debt
- How Weinstein, Hedge Funds Outsmarted JPMorgan
- IMF Chief Lagarde: Little Sympathy for Greece
- Economists Can't Solve Europe's Crisis
Media Money
Text Size 
Can An Online Article Superstore Save Journalism?
 |
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.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes
