E-Media Tidbits

Amid the rhetoric over how to support the business of journalism, the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism has taken a plunge by creating models of what a news network on the Web might look like with hard, if optimistic, numbers.

Broad and multi-tiered spreadsheets filled with detail build upon each other until at the bottom, they predict handsome profit margins for small, medium and large blogs, as well as a larger network that might aggregate them and have its own editorial and business staff. In the main cases, the sites are supported by advertising supplemented with other income streams.

The models, presented first this summer at the Aspen Institute and again last week at the "New Business Models for News" conference at CUNY, are a fine start, and the spreadsheets are provided openly. At both conferences, project leader Jeff Jarvis of the CUNY J-school said he was hoping people would test the models to strengthen their viability. "The aim," he said last week, "is to question, poke, probe, improve the business models."

My poking and probing shows that when the assumptions are changed to less optimistic but still reasonable scenarios, the models can swing to much lower profit levels or even losses.

Poor video. For a while, he was the hot boyfriend of the online world. His buddy, pre-roll advertising, was touted as the way to save the industry. Now, like a guy who dumped us, people are trashing-talking video content on news sites and telling all their girlfriends that video on the Web fails to perform.

I think it's time for some relationship counseling.

While clearly there are video efforts that have failed or been abandoned, declaring it all a failure doesn't accurately reflect what's going on in the industry. CNN.com is dropping its live online-only newscasts, but has also said that online video advertising has grown. I've got my own thoughts about why 702.tv didn't succeed, but since nobody asked, and this is about what is working, I'll move right along.

When I posted a question to the newspaper video listserv asking what kinds of video are working, I got an earful (eyeful?).

What does work: news shows. What doesn't work: news shows. What works: spot news. What doesn't work: spot news. What does work: feature pieces. What doesn't work -- you get the idea.

Of course, defining success is very slippery. A lot of traffic on one site may not be enough for another. Some places have very reliable numbers, others not so much. So for the purposes of this article, I'm not trying to define success, I'm letting each organization set their own definition of what makes video worthwhile.

All those who responded said, yes, absolutely, video works on their Web sites and is worth producing. The responses were passionate...

What a chasm to overcome. One journalist tweeted that the financial spreadsheets being shown were overwhelming, that "I don't do numbers." Someone else in the room quipped that business isn't as much fun as journalism. A third admitted, while watching a spreadsheet presentation, that he didn't understand EBITDA, a key financial term being used.

All of them, if they want to run a news business, need to get to work. The gathering was the third annual "New Business Models for News" conference at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Journalism, and the goal was, well, to try to find ways that the news business can survive.

The 150 to 200 people there were a diverse audience -- local bloggers and independent journalists trying to make a living, reps from big media companies like The New York Times and Gannett, venture capitalists, foundation funders, educators, consultants, students, technologists, advertising salespeople, ad network experts. Among all those people, the most frustration seemed to come from the folks working for independent and hyperlocal news sites -- the kind of sites targeted by many presentations...