Top Stories

In the past few years, we've seen news organizations become increasingly more adventurous and creative in the ways they deliver content to consumers. We've seen legacy media expand to new delivery vehicles. Newspapers have reinvented video online, taking cues from broadcast fundamentals while creating their own. And NPR has hired some of the top multimedia journalists from the newspaper industry to ramp up its online video and multimedia content.

One key component of the industry has yet to make this same transition: how to make money. News organizations are trying to reinvent the wheel, but they're taking these reinvented wheels from their cars and putting them on airplanes, expecting them to fly. Print display ads have, for example, evolved into banner ads; television commercials have become pre-roll and post-roll for online videos.

With the combination of a struggling economy and new news consumption habits, making money is key to news organizations' survival.

I'd like to start a virtual brainstorm and pose the question: How can journalism make money?

Have the community fund it

David Cohn's Spot.Us looks to crowdfunding to support investigative journalism in the San Francisco Bay Area. Users create story ideas that they think should be investigated and submit them to the site. From these ideas, journalists choose to write story pitches and open the idea up to the public to make donations. Once the project reaches its funding goal, those who have donated pay up and the journalist produces the story. If the project doesn't receive enough funding, no one is charged. After the story is complete, Spot.Us publishes it and offers it to news organizations for free (the site's content is licensed under Creative Commons). There is an option for news organizations to buy exclusive rights to the story, with the funding money going back to the journalist.

The Knight Foundation-funded project is in the testing phase and recently launched its official site. You can find about a dozen story pitches seeking funding (at least three others have already been funded). The project also has a presence on Twitter and Facebook and has a wiki.


The one challenge I see in the concept of crowdfunded journalism is that it could compromise journalistic independence if someone wanted a story that supported his agenda. However, the process that Cohn has in place seems to promote story ideas nested in journalism. Read more about Spot.Us in an August New York Times article.

(Side note: This is a similar model to Webby-award winner Kiva, a site that connects microlenders with entrepreneurs in developing countries who need funding.)

Membership drive

Public radio stations around the country reach out to their communities for funding twice a year through fall and spring membership drives. What if newspapers, televisions and Web sites introduced similar events? One of the disadvantages of the radio membership drive is the interference with delivery of information. I feel as though I get less news during the drives. Other media such as broadcast, print and Web may lend themselves better to these drives because they could take less invasive approaches. Television stations could use overlays during their newscasts to push people to donate to their station online. Newspapers could wrap subscribers' papers with targeted messages to donate and encourage single-copy buyers to become subscribers.

Tip jar

(Side note: News University has posted a "Donate to NewsU" button on its Online Media Law course.)

Los Angeles Times billboard

Last spring, the Times began testing the use of digital billboards with a 10-week campaign displaying breaking news on signs around Los Angeles. The newsroom remotely controlled the signs, which circulated unique, real-time messages that were said to reach more than 455,000 viewers each day. While this is more of a marketing approach than a way to make money, I could envision the Times incorporating related ads or sponsorships into its breaking news displays to bring in revenue, or to at least offset the costs.

Courtesy of The Editors Weblog

Pay what you want

The struggles of the music industry are very similar to those facing journalism. Both industries are made up of producers who are used to people paying for their work. And now, these consumers have found ways to get their work for free or cheaper.

A little over a year ago, the British alt-rock band Radiohead pre-released a digital download of their album "In Rainbows" with no set price tag. The band told its fans, "It's up to you" to choose how much to pay if they wanted it early. The band's trust in its fans paid off. After its official release in January, "In Rainbows" entered Billboard's British and United States charts as the No. 1 album. Also, the band raked in more money before the album release than it had made overall with the traditional release of its prior album, "Hail To the Thief" (the band hasn't said how much it made on the experiment).

Side note: In addition to the creative business model, journalism could learn from Radiohead's dynamic online presence, which has built a buzz around the brand and its work:

• Users have databased the songs the band plays at every show.
• MediaStorm producers have even paid homage to the Radiohead song "Creep."
• Radiohead hosted a contest for fans to remix their songs. See the embeddable widget for EveryBlock's Adrian Holovaty's submission below.
  

Those are a few examples I've found that may help get journalists thinking creatively about new ways to make money. I realize that some of these ideas are from news orgs, but others are from outside the industry. Granted, these might not work for every newsroom, but I hope they at least can be a catalyst for new ideas. Share your ideas (real or hypothetical) by posting a comment below.