First panel at the International Online Journalism Symposium at UT Austin in Texas went to the heart of the problem facing the established media: business models in online journalism.
Steve Outing started off by asking if we are trying hard enough, answering the question with a resounding, “No”. But he also criticised ideas of locking up content behind pay walls.
Instead he offered some ideas for the newspaper industry – free your content online, explore subscription models such as the Kindle or offer premium content for a set subscription fee.
What the newspaper industry should not do, he argued, is follow in the footsteps of the RIAA and fight innovation, rather than embrace it.
Subscription pays
Premesh Chandran, Chief Executive Officer of Malaysiakini.com, offer a different perspective.
The site has been up for a decade and aims to offer independent, credible and balanced news, even though this “puts you in danger of ending up in jail”.
Malaysiakini can exist because while print and broadcast is tightly restricted, the internet is free of censorship due to a business decision to attract foreign tech giants.
The site has 35 editorial staff producing some 50 stories a day in English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil. It received 1.8m visitors a month.
The site charges $40 a year for the English news, contributing $600,000. Ads brought in $200,000 last year, and an additional $200,000 came from grants. As a result, the site has been breaking even since 2004.
Subscription is at the heart of the business model, said Chandran. It started charging in 2002, even though most people said they didn’t want to pay and only 1% of readers subscribed. Today only 5% pay a subscription.
“People are more willing to pay for independent medium as it will help bring about political change,” said Chandran.
The site has very limited free content in English but political unrest in Malaysia helps to geneate interest in the service. In addition, Malayasiakini drives the message that by financially supporting the site, subscribers are supporting democracy.
Target publication
A different perspective on the role of the web and democracy came from Beth Frerking, Assistant Managing Editor for Politico.
Part of the site’s success was due to timing – arriving on the scene as interest in the US presidential elections exploded.
She described the site as “insider publication that attracts a large outsider readership”. Surprisingly, 90% of its readership comes from outside DC.
70% of its 3 million unique visitors a month are male and tend to be influential and affluent readers.
But ironically, its revenue comes primarily from its print publication. Frerking said she didn’t think Politico’s advertising model would work outside of DC, as most of its print revenue comes from issue advocacy advertising. It is narrowly targeted at a DC readership in a publication distributed in the nation’s capital.
Behind Brazil’s mega-portal
Márion Strecker, Content Director of the Brazilian mega-portal UOL.com.br, outlined the business strategy of the country’s number 1 portal. It has 1.8m paying subscribers out of 17m unique visitors a month, and almost 2 billion page views per month.
The site has been around since 1996, backed by the Folha newspaper and Portugal Telecom. It has some 1,000 content channels organised around 50 thematic portals, with 135 people in the newsroom out of 800 employees.
At the centre is mostly UOL content which is free. But the business sells a wide variety of products, such as technical support, Voip, music, anti-virus software, games, and of course, adult content.
Her advice: try everything, keep calm and think about ways of charging for other things then the journalism – “let journalists do the journalism”.
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