As a newspaper journalist (though working for the electronic media of our group) I often wonder what the future of newspapers will be. In my humble opinion the print newspapers will not disappear, but I fear that the big print publications will suffer a decline – in circulation, revenues, profits and hence also in the number of journalists.
However, there are also very interesting new developments in the media sector. Young journalists increasingly realize that maybe they will have to become media entrepreneurs themselves.
These days the more honest and innovative journalism educators tell their students they should prepare for the creation of their own companies. While the media behemoths are suffering, small and nimble organizations start their own media businesses. They do not invest in impressive offices, often they hardly have any offices at all – in an age with countless telepresence technologies this makes sense of course.
They don’t invest in printing operations or distribution networks – this is the online century. They try to avoid having employees and work instead with free lancers or partners, or they collaborate with others. So while it may be true that companies pay less for advertisements online compared to what they used to pay for print, the costs of those new internet news organizations are just a fraction of those of the traditional media publishers.
These days the more honest and innovative journalism educators tell their students they should prepare for the creation of their own companies. While the media behemoths are suffering, small and nimble organizations start their own media businesses. They do not invest in impressive offices, often they hardly have any offices at all – in an age with countless telepresence technologies this makes sense of course.
Let me give two examples of these developments in the media sector (I guess many more examples could be given, not only in the media, but in other industries as well).
First of all, today Globalpost.com launches its operations. Journalist Charles Sennott (formerly The Boston Globe) recruited 65 journalists, including
veterans of major news organizations such as CNN, The Washington Post,
Time magazine and The Associated Press.
The Associated Press reports:
The free Web site, supported by ads, will offer regular dispatches for an American audience to supplement coverage from the AP, Reuters and other news organizations still covering the world. GlobalPost also will sell stories to papers to run in print or online.
The new company seems to apply all the above mentioned principles:
Globalpost.com applies many of these principles:
- Journalists will generally be paid $1,000 a month as part-time freelancers.
- GlobalPost is providing its recruits with digital video cameras and
some travel expenses, but they will work from home. - Journalists also will receive equity stakes in the privately held
company, Global News Enterprises.
Let’s compare this to another new media startup, BNO News. This news organization runs a twitter news feed which got lots of attention from other journalists during the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.
BreakingNewsOn was originally founded by Michael van Poppel who lives in the Netherlands and the service is based on the Twitter social networking site. It has quickly grown to be one of the most successful news sources within the Twitter network and had, as of early January, 2009, more than 15,600 members.
BreakingNewsOn wants to develop a website offering its news, focused on breaking news and providing live streams to major international news networks. In an interview with My Digital Thoughts Michael Poppel said about the revenue streams (28 December 2007): “At this time we do not make any money out of it. However, we plan on using some kind of advertisements.”
The news service now actively asks donations. Not much of a business model you think? Maybe not, but on the other hand, the service started out in 2007 as an organization of one man, a twenty year old student, Michael Van Poppel.
On the donation site it is said the service is expanding and there’s “a team” now working on it:
Back in 2007, Michael van Poppel founded “BreakingNewsOn”. Since then, a team of experienced volunteers has been formed and BNO News was born in late 2008 – they have people working for this project in Europe and in North America.
In the past few months, the BNO News team has worked hard to create a major news gathering operation in a way that is unprecedented in the news industry. While working with new media, news wires, official press sources, the government, maintaining relations with public officials and monitoring news outlets from around the world, BNO News is in a unique position to say: “news as it happens”.
Van Poppel got noticed by TechCrunch. It is obvious that the upcoming website must give more possibilities to monetize the service, something which – as Robin Wauters of TechCrunch remarks – is hard to do on Twitter. Maybe that the more developed business model of the site will be much like that of the Globalpost.com.
This is exactly the kind of operations which could benefit from virtual worlds. It is certainly useful for editorial staff to meet informally and exchange gossip… and great ideas for news stories. This water cooler element and the possibility for serendipitous encounters is exactly what virtual worlds can offer.
I am convinced that this type of mean and lean entrepreneurial organizations will become more and more mainstream in many industries. I think virtual environments would be a very good idea for many of those companies, without being indispensable – it is perfectly possible to run a dispersed and intensely collaborative organization without any virtual environment. It is up to us, virtual worlds residents, enthusiast and dreamers, to convince those concerned of the added value of our worlds.
Roland Legrand
(this post is an adaptation of my previous post on the startup blog nekstr.com)