Death of journalism is overstated as are micropayments-Pew

Yesterday saw the publication of the Project for Excellence in Journalism's sixth annual report into the state of the media.

You can read the key findings HERE

However the report says that

Two developments converged in the last year to shorten the time that journalism has left to reinvent its business model and secure its financial future,

Whilst audience migration to the web continues to accelerate the report says that the focus is all wrong on the business models required to support this trend.

However the report continues the death of traditional journalism is being overstated.

I was particually interested in its analysis of the various business models.The report is quite adamant that

the debate over new economic models, especially for newspapers, has largely focused on the wrong things. That debate has focused on micro-payments for content and non-profit ownership models, when other potentially more promising options have gone less examined.

Instead they suggest three areas that could be considered

1. Adopt the cable model, in which a fee to news producers is built into monthly Internet access fees consumers already pay. News industry executives have not seriously tested this enough to know if it could work, but these fees provide half the revenue in cable.

2. Build major online retail malls within news sites. This could both create a local search network for small businesses and link them directly with consumers to complete transactions, not just offer advertising—with the news operation getting a point-of-purchase fee.

3. Develop subscription-based niche products for elite professional audiences. These are more than subject-specific micro-sites.