That's been the story this week as I started testing the emerging Web journalism business models. The community I'm writing about, of course, is Gannettland. Its residents live and work in more than 100 neighborhoods -- from Asbury Park on the north side to Visalia on the west side. City Hall is in the south side's McLean.Yet, in the brutal economics of today's journalism, a community with 46,000 residents may not be big enough to sustain the mammoth traffic needed to support even a one-man blog -- much less a fully staffed blog to cover all the local news. Gannett Blog's total first-week ad revenue: $265 -- an amount given a one-time boost, I suspect, by curiosity clickers.
A reader took note. "It's not about the market being broken -- it's about fragmentation,'' the anonymous reader said. "Jim's well-documented efforts here are illustrative of the overall challenges of digital journalism. A site needs a tightly defined niche to generate interest and break through the clutter of the superhighway, but needs sufficient mass to generate revenue from advertising. My fear is that while Jim has the niche, he can't get the mass.''
My own, bigger fear: Communities losing newspapers won't be rescued by a platoon of citizen-journalists, ready to keep an eye on government -- unless someone can figure out better economics. There's money for independent news bloggers, but is there enough?
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[Image: the Visalia (Calif.) Times-Delta comprises a Gannettland "neighborhood" of 137 worker-residents and their families]
I think what you'll see is a bunch of bloggers with bones to pick or interest in one or two specific issues becoming more important. As a for instance, let's say somebody sets up sites on San Francisco High School football or the McClean, VA, City Council.
ReplyDeleteThese citizen bloggers may well run their sites with no expectation of cash flow, just because they love it. And a reader with the inclination -- and enough time -- might be able to get a reasonable picture of their community by regularly trolling many of these citizen blogs, plus the obligatory government and orginizational Web sites.
In most cases, readers would not be able to expect objectivity or even reliability. But there could be a good deal of information there for people willing to nose around and find it.
Another possibility would be local blogs that aggregate the information from many other blogs covering the same area. This already happens where I live, and the blogs that aggregate content seem to be most popular. Nobody is getting rich -- or even, I suspect, making a living -- from these sites. But they do provide information.
Is this as good as a well-run, general information newspaper? No. Is it as convenient as a well-produced television newscast? No. Is it a glimpse of the future? I hope not, but we'll have to wait and see.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteYou got two links off of Fading to Black today. To this article and "Gannett's Dubow said raising specter of layoffs."
Don't know how much some honest links can help, but maybe they won't hurt either.
Raising your traffic might help ad sales, but that may well be offset by bandwidth costs and decreased CPM for click-throughs, per the Newsosaur.
I just read about your blog from a story on MinnPost.com, it's a mostly-local online-only non-profit news source. It seems to be a haven for layoff victims. I think it's a valuable resource for the community and may be looked at as a model. I believe a few larger grants have provided most of the start-up funding in addition to site advertising and general donations. I hope it sticks around for the long-term.
ReplyDelete