Shorenstein-newspay

A discussion: How to Make Money in News

These are Bill Densmore's raw notes from today's "executive seminar" in Cambridge, Mass., organized by the Joan Shorenstein Center o the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Entitled, "How to Make Money in News: New Business Models for the 21st Century," the event is organized as a roundtable discussion and breakouts.

There are some 24 people in the circle, and some 30 or so observers sitting around the outside of a meeting room at the Charles Hotel, next door to the Kennedy School.

Here are running notes of the day and discussion -- with no pretense that quotes are precisely correct or exhaustive -- but with every attempt to get sense and context correct.

Alex Jones opens:

"We did not want to put a gloss on what we want to do."

"We are trying to find a way that the covering of ... news can be covered financially .... try to find away to solve the riddle of how to keep news alive."

"It is going to take a long time for people who don't have an interest in news, or are certainly unwilling to pay for news ... to realize that the cost of that is too dear."

He took consolation in the latest circulation reports, because the past six months were one of the worst economic times in the American economy since the depression.

In the case of the Boston Globe, 82% decided to keep subscribing at a time of great economic hardship and even though it cost more.

"There is demonstrated out there a core of people who still take news seriously . . . that is the base upon which we need to build."

Bob Giles talks about how the Nieman Journalism Lab got started. They decided to look at best practices in digital development that support journalism.

Now Josh Benton of the Nieman Labs is explaining the mission to share the successes and mistakes in journalism -- that wasn't happening very well before the Nieman Journalism Lab. They are at 150,000 page views a month and 75,000 unique visitors a month . . . and 17,000 followers on Twitter. "That's really been transformative for us ... we now get almost twice as much traffic from Twitter as we do from Google."

A Carnegie grant has allowed them to hire Max Slocum from O'Reilly's book operation.

Bill Mitchell from the Poynter Institute is on a fellowship at Shorenstein this year. He talks about three areas Poynter is working in with the Carnegie grant money, including research and conferences.

David Levy, Reuters Institute

Devid Levy from the Reuters Institute is also "in the circle." Carnegie is funding them to study what's being done about news in Africa. And they are doing some comparative project on how news organizations are responding to the Internet. "I think comparative rsearch is often quite useful" in dispelling myths.

Six oobservations:

• Avoid technological determinish. "The internet isn't killing news, what it is doing is it is increasing the reach of news." It is undermining one business model, but in Brazil, newspapers are growing and in Finland, high news readership is compatible with high internet penetration.

• Move away from an obsession on the supply side.

• Let's look at the demand side. We need more research on how people value the news. The move from pay to free doesn't have to be a one-way street. The bottled water business is now a $2B a year market. SMS messages are profitable. "People will pay for the oddest things ... if we can provide them in a useful and convenient way."

• If journalism matters to democracy, let's focus on that purpose for journalism rather than jobs for journalists." Focus on networked, public journalism.

• Focus on ubiquity and impact. There will always be news for enthusiasts. "What I care about is public-intrest news that is used by large numbers of individuals."

• Public support is rightly viewed by suspicion by many, rightly in some ways, and it may well be impossible in the U.S." Broad support and use can increase the independence of the news organization -- such as the BBC. If you combine that with automatic support mechanisms, that can increase the independence from the funder. In Sweden, a fund makes sure that 15 Swedish cities have competitive newspapers ... there is 75% turnout to elections there. Support for distribution is less contentious than support for content.

"There may well be new business models, but above all let's come up with solutions that are as routed in understanding demand as supply" .... and serve "a mass market, not just a minority interest."

Jeff Cowan, formerly USC

Interested in what the government's role could be. Key findings to date:

Government support of media has always been there. With postal subsidies -- always a core principle. Today the funding level for commercial media is in excess of a $1B a year -- but it is declining. There are three buckets of it:

• Postal subsidies. Takiing 1969 as a departure point -- as of 1970, 75% of the cost of postage for publications was being paid for by the federal government. Today that is down to 15%. "That decline ... if you take those numbers would actually take some magazines that are currently losing money profitable." The Reorganization Act of 1970 made most the difference.

• Public notices. At least one full page of the Wall Street Journal every day consists of legal notices. "We think that the federal government is in terms if lines of print, is if not the biggest one or the two or three biggest advertisers in the WSJ, maybe the single largest advertiser -- the federal government .... but it is certain to decline." it is inevitable that this will move online.

• Tax breaks. Ink subsidies and other things.

"It's more than a billion dollars, but it is hard to assemble this."