Paywalls, Patch, Public Media & Pointcast Memories: 11 Conventional News Wisdoms We’ll Test in 2011

Conventional Wisdom #1) Readers won't pay for non-business content. Yes, we know that readers will pay for the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and that Consumer Reports, which helps us save money, counts more digital subs than anyone else. While some smaller dailies have begun to ...

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9 Questions: Zell’s Clown Car, The New “100,” Tablets & Print Circ & Daughter of Alesia

Will the cats of newspaper industry be successfully herded? After pouring millions into his Alesia project, Rupert Murdoch gave the retreat order to his would-be Roman warriors, killing the tablet-oriented paid news portal initiative. Though his News Corp is the biggest news company in the ...

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The Newsonomics of Replacement Journalism

The second half of the year has so far produced TBD’s hiring of 50 in Washington, Patch’s push to pick up 500 journalists across the country, and the new alliance for public media plan to hire more than 300 journalists in four major cities, if funding can be found in 2011. In addition, the ...

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“Public Media” $100 Million Plan: 100 Journalists Per City

One hundred "public media" reporters and editors in a market is a huge increase. Among those four stations, the news staff would now range from 12 to 30 each, among them. It's tough to count because these are legacy radio operations and radio requires different job descriptions than digital ...

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Texas Tribune’s Fast Start Seconds Regional News Start-Up Model

Clearly, this model works best, and most easily, in big states like Texas and California. We’d have to believe though that the principles, if not the scale, are widely applicable across the US and in other nations as well

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The Newsonomics of TBD’s New D.C. News Site

Let’s look at the Newsonomics of launching what is the nation’s first combined local online news startup/24-hour news channel. That combination is the most basic to understanding the business of TBD, informing both TBD’s cost structure and revenue models. If TBD turns profitable within two to ...

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The Newsonomics of Membership, Part 2

“The difference is that public radio has a ‘barker channel,’ meaning they have the radio megaphone to get people to come into the tent or become members in the first place during membership drives in which they can withhold the programming,” he says. “That barker channel is great for public ...

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The Newsonomics of Membership

While the daily press is testing paywalls — some with big holes, some with small, some with rungs, some without — news startups are taking a different route, that NPR model. That divide of how best to get readers to pay may be a decisive one when we look back in five years.

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The Newsonomics of Copyediting Value

That’s left me wondering exactly what value is in good editing. Are there any Newsonomics of editing, value to be gained and harvested?

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Hold On, It’s Coming!: New Election Money Could Newly Fund Media

The Supremes’ decision to allow unfettered commercial political speech could be a bonanza….for media companies. Commercial influencers — that would be corporations, and to a lesser degree, big labor — want to reach likely voters, and news media is a great way to find ...

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