A possible new strategy for web publishing

Paul Bradshaw finishes off his series of posts about the 21st century newsroom with a subject that is dear to my heart.How does it make money.As I have wriiten many times,the new media has a major hurdle to get over in that people don't want to pay for the content and advertisers see it as a less expensive way of paying for publicity.


Paul offers some alternative strategies.

1.Attract more readers-thus increasing the reach of the article and the price of advertising.

2.Create content that people are prepared to pay for-my comment would be that it hasn't worked so far.

3.to create new platforms-as Paul points out

This is where the money is at the moment, if you can make it work. Web 2.0 is all about building on top of the web (which is itself built on top of the internet). Facebook is a perfect example of a company building a platform that people are prepared to sign up to. Flickr and YouTube are others.

4.To sell news as a service not a product

Success online rests on responding to, anticipating - and creating - the needs of readers.

5.Remembering not to rely on advertising alone.

6.To sell the services that come with the new platform

News websites have the perfect opportunity to leverage their content and - crucially - communities to provide services over and above the news itself

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7.The potential for mobile technology where there is a culture for payment.

I think that they are all good points.My worry is two fold.Firstly will the time period between the loss of revenue on the traditional side be too gret to bridge the gap?.Secondly I still have doubts that the culture of free content on the web can be replaced.