2011, A News Odyssey: Digg-ing Meets Up With Digging

TalkBack 1 of 1:

• Thread View
• Flat View

There are better ways to monetize and support great news writers

The problem, as I see it, is that News hasn't really found its "business voice" in the internet. Sure, news is powerful and one of the main things people do online. And, the hallowed brands of print still carry a fair amount of weight online along with the "new kids".

But what they haven't done is figured out the whole monetization thing. And ad buyers don't particularly evaluate a media buy in terms of a site's newswriting cred - they're just looking at the spreadsheets and trying to find performance media and audience reach. This causes commoditization of the ad placements, and news gets the short stick every time.

Let's dissect: Who values the News space most of all? PR professionals, for one, as well as companies and individuals who have news of their own to share. And why isn't the News media figuring out more ways to engage and grow this customer base?

Not to toot our horn, but we've thought a lot about it, and that's why we built the Newsforce Network. It's an appropriate, transparent place for PR to participate in the News industry without hurting anyone's sense of propriety and ethics. For once, PR can go direct to the readers with their news announcements.

PR and journalists have had a long, sometimes uncomfortable relationship. They both need each other, but usually don't want to admit it. Now that the editorial chain is becoming significantly fragmented, isn't it time we start looking at new ways for them to interact?

And, what other business models can News experiment with? Would people pay more to have their wedding featured on the home page in a local paper? Maybe. What about elevating their "lost dog" to a more significant exposure on the site rather than being buried in the back Classifieds online database?

If you look at the Google model - "Who is willing to pay the most for exposure in XX editorial environment, for a particular period of time, for a particular level of visibility?" - you can start thinking up all kinds of new ways to save local and national media. All they have to do is automate it, so that it's more of a self-serve option since many print sales reps are still struggling with how to sell online. STOP THINKING IN TERMS OF COLUMN INCHES AND LITTLE AD BOXES and you free yourself up for potentially much higher revenue.

My two cents. I appreciate you calling attention to this. I agree, and I would like to see us as a nation continue to support great investigative journalism in all its forms.


Best,
Dana Todd
CMO
Newsforce

Posted by: danatodd   Posted on: 09/06/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS to Achieve Highly Available, Load-Balanced Clusters Dell The Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS operating system integrates Cluster ... Download Now
• The True Costs of Virtual Server Solutions VMware In an economic environment that is repeatedly heralding the message "do ... Download Now
• Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Iinfrastructure VMware VMware virtualization software has been adopted by over 120,000 enterprise ... Download Now