When blogs were first introduced, they were heralded as a new medium that had the potential to revolutionize news. Sure enough, they did. At the time, no one quite knew how to monetize blogs, but since the introduction of various advertising services such as google adsense and newegg that problem has been solved. Since the early days of blogging – which really weren’t so long ago – there are now hundreds and thousands of people making their livings on the web. And now, as behemoth’s like the New York Times struggle to stay alive, Magazines like the New Yorker see declining profits, and well-known long-form papers like the Chicago Tribune fold, everybody is wondering, where news is going?
Recently Ariana Huffington of Huffington Post raised $25 million from venture capitalists according to Gawker to “continue to expand its content offerings.” The post plans on adding an investigative journalist division, localizing huffington post in some specific cities, and possibly acquiring a number media outlets here and there. In a market where media giants are being read their last rites, it’s a wondrous feat to raise that much money. But that’s the thing, I don’t think that magazines and newspapers are dead. They’ve simply stuck themselves in a model that once garnered huge monies and they don’t know what to do now that the model’s broken.
On another front, Gather has a different model completely. Where Huffington Post publishes news and such, much like a daily newspaper, Gather invites members to blog, and its community is extremely insular. Individuals surf gather, much like they surf Google. They search for content among their friends, however, rather than searching the entire internet. Gather has recently received a bunch of investment from various publishing outlets who see their model as a promising model for online publishing’s future.
While I’m not exactly among HuffPo’s left-leaning readers, I think that they have the beginnings of a new model figured out. I mean, let’s be honest, when blogs were first introduced, did anyone really think that they were different than a Newspaper or a Magazine’s op-ed page? Basically, blogs just let people begin their own op-ed page for anywhere from $0-$10 depending on how much control they wanted. But because of the perception that somehow blogs were different from newspapers bloggers began revolutionizing the internet, from creating services like Technorati (which just downsized its staff) to creating interesting concepts like “pingbacks”, “nofollow” and “noindex” links, feedburner, and robust Content Management Frameworks like Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. Quickly, thereafter, Newspapers began adopting a lot of these new, easy to implement features like Comments to ad a bit of interactivity to their newspapers and magazines.
Since then, newspapers and magazines have begun implementing blogs themselves on their websites: Stanley Fish’s blog on the New York Times, for example. But the reality of it is, these blogs are nothing more than an excuse to hire opinion editorialists. They are hired “talking heads” in a sense, and they end up with a following. People visit the New York Times’ site in order read these blogs specifically. It’s kind of like a normal blog and it’s really no different than a magazine columnist.
Newspapers and Magazines, need to begin think like bloggers. When they talk about blogs in articles, they need to link to them. Bloggers work in communities, and they like it when traffic is sent their way. The New York Times, Vogue, The New Yorker, and others publications like them, would similarly benefit from individual bloggers like Lorelle, communitarian bloggers like Powerline, and huge amalgamations of bloggers like Gather’s users. Advertising hasn’t disappeared, it’s just moved online.
The new model for websites needs to consist of a combination of Gather and HuffPos’ examples. Newspapers and Magazines need to publish regularly and consistently, much like they have always done, and additionally, they must incorporate features that will enforce community. Whether its the implementation of a forum or the implementation of some other method for getting people to “hang out”, there has to be one or many community-building elements. In this, large newspapers like the New York TImes fails. Second, there has to be a mixing of ad models. I understand the appeal of putting paid ads on a website (you know exactly how much your making before you make it), implementing javascript ad models like Google or Newegg, have unlimited ad potential. While a lot of local newspapers charge a flat rate, for banners on their websites, there is some incentive to add javascript models to places like single article pages or forum pages. A lot of these javascript ad models depend both on pageviews and ad clicks. If javascript ads are used on certain pages, suddenly, there becomes an incentive to create a community of individuals that hang out and view many pages. This become especially imporant for small-town newspapers. Think about it: if a small town newspapers get 10,000 visits every month, and has about two average pageviews per visitor (the homepage and an article), if that paper can find a way to double their average pageviews and they are using one of these javascript ad models, they can potentially double their revenues.
Another essential component is getting regular usership. You want people to be invested in your publication. One really simple way to do this is to encourage people to link to email updates. Email updates will translate into the same users coming back time after time. What it does is it ensures a base of usership. It ensures that people will come back, and that’s what you want. Anyhow, I’ll talk more about getting people invested in your publication some other time. Right now, I’m off to watch the History Channel. Their running a fun little series on UFOs. Conspiracies, here I come!
